Is Walter senile, or just a moonbat?

Good God! I went to the CNN transcript and here is what the Mad Walter had to say: "... in the fact that he dressed well, that he looked well, he was clean shaven, nearly clean shaven as those folks get ..."

Is Walter senile, or just a moonbat?
Yes.

When I finally got a chance to read the translation of Osama's speech, I immediately thought to myself that it was a ceasefire offer. Someone far smarter than me came to the same conclusion.

Our response is due Tuesday. See you at the ballot box.

Walter's probably channeling that old Star Trek episode where an Earth historian is drugged by an evil mastermind on another planet to create a replica of Nazi Germany though his speeches. In this case, Cronkite probably thinks the U.S. captured bin Laden months ago and has him in captivity in some barn on the Bush ranch, where he was drugged into recording this video that just happened to say many of the same things the president's most rabid opponents have been mouthing for the past 18 months, and the tape was then passed covertly to al Jazera to support its authenticity (and, hey -- this has the added benefit of fitting naturally into the Bush=Hitler meme that same group loves to foam about).

Er... painfully wrongheaded as Cronkite can be, I'm pretty sure the Rove line is what even the old-timers call irony...

My Walter Cronkite moment came during a trip to Holland.

I was in a nice little hotel in Breda and flipping channels on the TV. On a Dutch news program were Cronkite and Gennadi Sosonko, an international chess master and Soviet Jewish refusnik who had spent 8 years in the Gulag discussing the Soviets and the Americans. Sosonko calmly was explaining, this was 1985, how the Soviet Union really was horrible and that Gorbachev was no better than anyone else, how Andropov was a thug, etc. Cronkite insisted the entire fault was America's especially that damned cowboy, Reagan, and that the Soviet Union really wasn't so bad.

If he could say this face-to-face on television to a guy who spent 8 years in the Hotel Brezhnev, imagine what he really thinks.

Uhg, it's worse than I thought.

My lasting image of "the most trusted man in America" is that of Walter at the helm of his sailboat with the Clintons on board in the midst of their post-Monica reconciliation. Always a willing vehicle for the Democrats.

Semolina --

Even if Uncle Wally was engaging in irony here, the use of Rove's name indicates it was irony framed in a background thought that goes something like, "That @#$!@#$ bin Laden has to come out now and use our talking points to attack Bush four days before the election!" It's irony masking an anger than the tape is going to help Rove's candidate come Tueaday.

Fred Barnes took a similar tone on Fox during Brit Hume's show, but as a GWB supporter, his remark was naturally lighter, saying that Osama's tape should have been followed by a shot of the president saying "I'm George W. Bush, and I approve of this message."

Had bin Laden simply appeared on tape and proved it was current by congratulating the Red Sox on ending their 86-year World Series drought, instead of channeling bizarre accusations from overweight former editors of The Nation, you would have seen Cronkite in a much happier mood Friday night.

Any chance that Cronkite knew Philby, Burgess, Cairncross, and Blunt? I can't remember the other one.

McLean

Bart: great Cronkite story. I wonder if he ever expressed those opinions on American TV?

Cronkite was bizarre, but the idea, linked above, that Laden was offering a truce or asking for negotiations is even more bizarre.

He was demanding surrender.

If all he wants is for Islam to be left alone, he already had that.

First thought watching the Osama has-bin Laden video: "Snake Plisken? I thought you were dead."

Second thought watching the Osama has-bin Laden video: Good one-word summary for this latest Osama video-message: "Uncle!"

Third thought watching the Osama has-bin Laden video: Somebody oughta buy that guy a juicer.

Fourth thought watching the Osama has-bin Laden video: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Papaya,

I don't know, but I imagine if he ever had, he'd have been yanked from CBS News and be doing infomercials with Ron Popiel about now.

My guess is that he always was a knee-jerk Stalinist idiot just as much as Ed Asner, but that he kept it under wraps enough so that he couldn't be fired. You should ask yourself why CBS gave him the bum's rush while they are keeping Mike Wallace on the air until he's 120.

Actually, he did, but never on TV. My dad used to come home from media functions in New York in the 1960s and 70s fuming about what a hypocrite Cronkite was, saying things in speeches before the Society of Professional Journalists or the Overseas Press Club he would never dare mouth on the air.

The difference back then, of course, was those functions (like the Gridiron Club dinners today) were essentially "off the record" events, and there were no travelling C-SPAN cameras to record what was actually said, so Walter's true feelings about Vietnam, social welfare spending or the MX missile program were only known to a handful of insiders. The problem with many jouralists at the big media centers today is even with all the new technology, they still think they're playing by the rules of 30 years ago, when they could lead dual lives in front of and away from the camera or typewritter.