Native New Yorker? Texas Liberal? Dan Rather Biopic Reveals Incredible Career: What’s the Frequency Kenneth? 

New Yorker? Texas Liberal? Dan Rather Biopic Reveals Incredible Career: What’s the Frequency Kenneth? 

If you’re a New Yorker, and even if you’re not, you’ve probably heard of Dan Rather. Depending on your age, you either know him as the anchor of the evening news on CBS or as a social media personality with many viral tweets in today’s idiom.

And you might also be wondering: What is the frequency? And who the heck is Kenneth? That’s a question we’ll never know the answer to. It’s what the two men who beat up Dan Rather in Manhattan said to him just before they did so in the 1990s. And only one was ever caught, and he never explained the cryptic statement. So that we’ll never know. But it was a memorable moment in history, and probably resulted from Mr. Rather stepping on some political toes. Which, of course, he specialized in, so who knows what the actual reason was behind this attack.

But let’s start at the beginning. This was an excellent documentary about a man most of us know, but we don’t really know him at all. So first he almost died of rheumatic fever when he was a child, a fact that kept him out of the military despite his best efforts to get in. This near death from childhood disease also seems to have steeled him for a life of adversity, where you keep going no matter what because there’s nowhere else to go and nothing else you can do. As he said in his sign off regularly, “Courage” and “Steady” both embody this type of spirit. It can be noted that Mother Cabrini was another steel willed individual who did what needed to be done regardless of the discouragement of others, and she, too, nearly died of a different illness when she was a small child.

For Dan, instead of going into the military, he started working in the media. One of his most formative jobs was at a radio station, where he learned to create word pictures because there was no visual on radio. This helped him throughout his career to allow his viewers to feel like they were there with him instead of just watching from afar. Dan Rather was excellent at bringing the viewer or listener into what he was seeing.

Another extremely formative time for him was the Civil Rights movement, which he covered on the ground on the front lines, in Alabama. He saw people beaten, arrested, hosed down with fire hoses, everything. And he saw the response of the white folks who wanted things to stay as they were – separate and unequal, where race meant everything, including where to live and how much money you or your kids had. And if you stepped over the line, whether by looking at a white woman the ‘wrong’ way or fighting for your right to be treated equally, there was the ever present threat of the KKK and lynch mobs. Not only that, but the reporters themselves soon became the targets of the racist ire, because they dared to show what was happening; they brought the attention of the public to the situation. They brought it before the eyes of New York and other big cities.

His reporting and that of others at the time helped shape that movement into what it became. It may not have succeeded without the eyes of the world riveted to it, concerned about what was happening there, with an understanding of the impact of these decisions and moments.

It also changed Mr. Rather as a person. He began to understand the nature and depths of hate, especially bigotry and what he called institutional racism. What he might have meant was the racism of the institutions such as the police that kept things as they were. He felt guilty that he didn’t come out from behind the camera and just join in as an activist to try to change these things himself, to right these wrongs and injustices, some of which still persist. In places in the Deep South, there is just as much racism today, though it’s secreted and hidden more. The feelings of bias and superiority are still experienced there.

These same states are those where they have the strictest laws against women’s autonomy, particularly their religious freedom if they aren’t Christian, with regard to abortion. For in all other faiths outside of Christianity, abortion is a decision between a woman, her husband, her doctor, and her spiritual counselor (whether rabbi, imam, monk, or other). The state has no place in this arena, but in Louisiana, Alabama, Indiana,  and other southern deep red states, which already have the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, they restrict all abortions and, in some cases, have even jailed women who’ve had miscarriages without intervention or assistance. The attorney general of West Virginia, before the similar North Dakota law he was touting was struck down by the Supreme Court, taunted women who have had miscarriages, essentially saying that the state was coming for them to put them in jail. Considering that most abortions are sought by women of color, it isn’t surprising that these deeply racist states are sexist as well, run almost entirely by white men, who seem to want to control the bodies of women, those of color in particular.

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Dan Rather was also the first to confirm that President Kennedy had died after being shot that fateful day in Dallas. This was followed by Mr. Rather basically going off to war without being in battle during Vietnam.

One starts to realize that there’s no story too dangerous for him to witness firsthand, and he had a seriously illustrious career. It wasn’t all good times, but it was definitely an eventful one. Watching the evolution of this journalist into the person he has become today – where he is followed on social media by millions, and he is always one to point out the obvious or to see the humor in a difficult situation – was a really interesting adventure to watch.

And if you close your eyes when the Republicans are discussing the “liberal media,” this all might sound familiar. Almost like you heard it a few weeks ago when they started a slow destruction of the very independent type of media they always have had a problem with. Only this is worse than destroying the for-profit non-independent, partisan media such as CBS or ABC. Instead, it’s the rural public broadcasting stations that serve non industrial areas which still aren’t in communication with the rest of the world. And as mentioned in our previous video about public broadcasting: still to this day, the vast majority of Americans not only support public broadcasting, but they also largely consider it unbiased. Most parents consider its educational programming to be essential. This is quite distinct from their feelings toward mainstream media, such as Dan Rather worked for at CBS.

The recent rescission bill’s devastating impact on public broadcasting will be felt most keenly in the Red states, where 40-60% of residents are on public assistance. This is in distinction to the Blue states, where 10-20% of the residents are on public assistance. It shows clearly the wealth gap between the Republican and Democrat-led states, where the Blue states essentially carry the rest of the country by filling the federal government’s coffers more, as they have the greater tax liability. It should also be realized that these Red states, having a negative attitude toward the poor, make it as difficult as possible to get such benefits, due to their attitude towards the poor, disabled, and minorities. Yet still the residents are dependent on the government.

You will learn a lot from this, both historically and specifically, about CBS itself. You’ll also learn about journalism, and every provider of independent journalism should consider this to be essential watching. I would highly recommend this documentary, and would give it five stars.

Following are some interesting quotes from the Dan Rather Documentary:

Dan Rather: “If you’re gonna be in journalism and wanna be loved, you’d better get a dog.”

Senator Jesse Helms, a former senator, wanted to take over CBS: “The real threat to freedom of speech and the real threat to our constitutional system is on our TV screens every evening and on the front pages of our newspapers every day.”

Jim Cain, GOP strategist: “…the only way to stop what we see as a slide towards liberalism in this country is to bring an end to the bias, the liberal bias that exists in the media.”

Shepard Smith from Fox (the following three quotes): “Right now, it’s really easy to monetize crap….”

“We have to tell the truth to our viewers. That’s a minimum. And you watch Dan Rather for a while, and you know who he is. He’s a truth teller. He’s a truth seeker. Dan doesn’t take sides. He pulls every lever he can to get every ounce of truth out of every person he interviews.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a hurricane…when you want to know what it feels like, Dan Rather brings you there.”

Dan Rather’s Twitter account had, among many others, the following viral post:

“Dear Supreme Court, Thanks for nothing. -Planet Earth

Dan Rather’s sign off with his daughter: “LNF – Love Never Fails”

His final statement: We’ve been through very difficult times before, times of great division. It’s a time, I think, to take a deep breath, whisper to ourselves: steady.”

The synopsis for this film:

RATHER revisits Dan Rather’s 60+ years as a journalist with full unrestricted access,
and offers an unfiltered look at both his esteemed career and his present renaissance as one of the last beacons of quality reporting.

Featuring Dan Rather, Ronan Farrow, Mark Cuban, Andy Cohen, Samantha Bee,
Soledad O’Brien, and Shepard Smith

From the front lines of the Civil Rights movement to JFK’s assassination, from Watergate to Abu Ghraib, Dan Rather is who America turned to for the truth. For decades, his voice provided the steady drumbeat of reason for an entire nation. In today’s turbulent times, with threats to journalism and our democracy more prevalent than ever, Dan Rather remains the resounding voice of resistance, with millions reading and sharing his posts on social media.

This unprecedented feature-length documentary event weaves the past, present and future of journalism as it delves into the hidden history of the man behind the news. We will revisit Dan Rather’s 60+ years as a journalist with full unrestricted access, and offer an unfiltered look at both his esteemed career and his present renaissance as one of the last beacons of quality reporting.

RATHER is a candid, personal and urgent look at the world of journalism and the essential role it plays in preserving a thriving democracy through the lens of one of its greatest and most iconic figures. The story has never been more important for a generation thirsting for legitimate journalism in the era of “fake news.”

Banner Image: Rather promo poster. Image Credit – Falko Ink