Sometimes, I have a different view on things. I am not contrary for the sake of contrariness, and I hate revisionist history when it is coloured by someone's agenda.... [I hate hatefulness, too].
Walter Cronkite passed away yesterday. He lived a long, full life. As an adolescent and teenager, I trusted Uncle Walter, as did so many others. He was there to break us the news of our President's passing, and so many times, he was there as we breathlessly anticipated another launch into space.
I want to tell you that I am angry, and here is why: Yes, Professor McLuhan, the medium really IS the message.... there are so many television specials right now [not to mention internet stories] lionizing Walter Cronkite and mentioning his "brave stand against the unpopular Vietnam War" and many other words to that effect. Do you know that in the Tet Offensive, the Viet Cong were decimated? Do you know that after that [early 1968] the war in South Vietnam was to repel the forces of the North Vietnamese state? Years after the fact, Vo Nguyen Giap, the Commander in Chief of the People's Army, replied to the thought that the American forces had never been defeated in the field in Vietnam - he agreed, and added that it was also irrelevant. It was irrelevant because he and his forces never lost the will to win, while our society and government did. We lost our will to win in part because a man we trusted, our own fatherly Uncle Walter, lied to us. He proclaimed the war to be lost, and so we spat upon our brothers and turned our backs on those we had been helping. In the afterlife are over 50,000 American souls, lost in Indochina. They will undoubtedly be asking, "why?"
Don't look for any hints of this in the mainstream media. After all, they lionized Michael Jackson while ignoring Ed McMahon. The age of one trusted icon handing down Truth is gone, and thank God for that. Truth, it turns out, was merely Opinion, and we fell for it. Shame on us.
2 comments:
I appreciate you sharing your viewpoint, and mostly I TRUST that you know what you're talking about. I wouldn't have thought about this, otherwise, and it is quite eye-opening.
Thank you, Charmaine... it was a long time coming in reading and absorbing material, and I did not want to come to this viewpoint. I grew up trusting Uncle Walter like everyone else, and I hate having such a feeling. It's sad.
I almost wish there was some sort of conflict-of-interest clause for journalists. Did Walter report as he did because of his personal feelings regarding the war, and wish it to be over at any cost? Did he truly misunderstand what he was seeing? We may never know, and it would not change things in any event. What a tragic episode in American History.
Thank you for commenting - I appreciate your input.
Post a Comment