December 18, 2004
LEFT BEHIND:
Bill Moyers Gets In the Last Word (Tom Shales, December 18, 2004, Washington Post)
Bill Moyers has always taken the high road, but it got a little lonely up there. In a country where political discourse grows ever more shrill, his voice was more and more easily drowned out. Last night, at the age of 70 and on the eve of his 50th wedding anniversary, Bill Moyers took the high road home.Moyers said not goodbye but "farewell" as he took leave of "Now," the program he has hosted for the past three years on PBS. The show will continue in a few weeks with another host, but Moyers's presence will be an irreplaceable loss. Watching the final program, which consisted of a report on the dominance of right-wing ranting in TV and radio and an interview with Anthony Romero, head of the ACLU, one may have felt guilty about not having supported Moyers more loyally as he kept fighting the good fight.
His is one of the few liberal voices left in broadcasting....
So if you leave with your foes in complete control of the field how can you be said to have had the last word? Posted by Orrin Judd at December 18, 2004 6:03 PM
The man went on the Charlie Rose Show the night of the presidential election and said:
'I think if Kerry were to win this in a - in a tight race, I think there’d be an effort to mount a coup, quite frankly. ... I mean that the right wing is not going to accept it.'
Now there were some people on the right back in 1999 mumbling things about Bill Clinton using the Y2K computer fears to cancel the 2000 presidemntial election. But to my knowledge none of them had national television programs on PBS or past connections with two of the three major commercial broadcast networks, or are being treated as paragons of journalism at the time of their departure.
When Pierre Salinger finally slipped off into retirement and started spouting similar charges to what Moyers has said, a lot of the luster had warn off thanks to his TWA Flight 800 allegations. However, with Moyers, his Krugman-on-steroids coup fears of just seven weeks ago are being flushed down the memory hole as if they never happened, and much of the media is taking the claims of his final show respectfully, even though you suspect many of that same group know Bill is fast approaching the "Crazy Uncle" stage of his life and would like to usher him down to the basement as soon as possible.
Posted by: John at December 18, 2004 7:50 PMThe way these retirements are going, Garrison Keillor is going to need reinforcements to continue the sanctimonious-pinko broadcast business.
Posted by: Axel Kassel at December 18, 2004 10:07 PMBill Moyers has always taken the high road, but it got a little lonely up there. In a country where political discourse grows ever more shrill, his voice was more and more easily drowned out.
Yeah, nothing shrill here. Nothing here, either.
Posted by: Matt Murphy at December 18, 2004 11:27 PM