YouSaid · the spoken record

Dan Rather

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2020-12-10

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2020-12-10

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1. “And that sort of stuck with me. So, in answer to the question, as long as I have my health and somebody will help me do it, I want to be doing this work. I think it's work that matters. Look, I have no illusions, David. I'm on the backside now. That's the circle of life. I'm working on the periphery, but I enjoy it as much as anything I've ever done. And maybe I'm kidding myself, we all live with our illusions. I think, yeah, on my better days, maybe it does still count for something”

   2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Think I'm on a mission that never ends if you want to put it that way. Look, you know, I have a lot of faults and have made a lot of mistakes, but by this time, I've learned a good deal about what I am, who I am, and who I'm not. First of all, not only do I enjoy this work, I do have a passion for doing the work. I love doing the work. I'd like to think I'm at least reasonably good at it. And as long as I have my health, that I want to be doing this. I remember I can't remember exactly when it was, but it was a fairly old priest, I'm not Catholic, Protestant, but was a priest. He was talking some older women, and he said to them, you know, keep smiling, keep trying, keep fighting. You're going to be dead a long time.”

   2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “We're still trying to get that balance, and I'm fearful it's not going to get any easier. It's already very difficult. But looking ahead, it's not going to get any easier.”

   2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “And to get the ratings and to get the demographics, and therefore so much of news today, first of all, it concentrates, it looks for the sensational, it looks for the big breaking news at the expense of almost everything else. And many news programs that are advertised as, quote, news programs, are in fact entertainment programs and designed to be entertainment programs. And we could spend the rest of the day talking about this. I know you want to move on, but it answers your question that journalism and journalists are still struggling with how to make that balance between the business side and the trust that we engender.”

   2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Afraid not very well, David. I'm afraid the answer we haven't done very well in Banisu. And you've laid out the dilemma quite well. And the reason I say not very well, no excuses that we're all responsible for we do. But the business model that financed journalism as we knew it, journalism was fiercely independent when necessary and did deep digging investigative reporting in first class international reporting. That business model with the advent of the internet pretty much disappeared. And with a few notable exceptions, nobody has figured out a new business model that will emphasize journalism of trust. that the pressure is even at the best of places the pressure is on to get those clicks to get those hits”

   2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “There is no easy answer. That's the point. As we talk here today, there are tens of millions of Americans who have been convinced that Joe Biden's election is illegitimate. And they're going to believe that going forward and how that unfolds worries me a good deal”

   2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “worthy of the name is that we have to be careful and not lose sight of the fundamentals. the fundamentals are why are we you know why are we doing this well we're doing it because we want to be truth seekers and our job is to get us get to the truth or as close to the truth as we can as humanly possible and to tell it and that the best thing we can do is just do our damn job do the job and hope that enough of the public comes to understand what it is we're trying to do but I recognize that's not a very strong answer because it's still”

   2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “When it first began to really take root, look, there's been a strain of this for as long as anybody else can remember, but it really has begun to take root in the internet age and accelerate it during the age of Trump, the era of Trump. So journalists, again, including myself with thrown off balance, I think in the last two or three years, I see signs that journalists and journalism in general are beginning to sort of study ourselves once again and deal with the fact that it is a fact that the world has changed tremendously the whole world of how information is disseminated, even the definition of who is and who isn't a journalist is an active question these days. But in the main, and certainly it's hard to generalize, but in the main, David, I think the attitude of most journalists to”

   2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Well, that is true. And to answer your question, how have journalists handled it? Speaking for myself, but I think it's true in general. I think journalists and the profession of journalism, we were knocked off balance by this.”

   2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “And there were plenty of people who said, you know, you're finished, you're through, you've had it, and you had a good run. You made some mistakes at the end, so now it's over. Frankly, I didn't know whether that was true or not, but I said to myself that I love working. I love this work. I got to find something to do. And fortunately that I can say that... Through God's grace and a lot of luck, that's been left in 2006, here we are in 2020, and I'm still able to do this work. And in many ways, it's the best part of my professional career.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Well, probably not very well. I never believed until the very end. I believed that I would stay at CPS News. And without going into the details of it, we reported a true story. We reported a story that was true. It was attacked over the process by which we got to the truth. And we had made some mistakes. But in answer to your question that I realized very late that the corporate ownership Viacom Corporation, a man named Sumner Redistone, that CBS and Viacom intended not only to let me go, but they sought to destroy my reputation for their own benefit. And that's not just the whine of somebody who lost his job, it's the fact that it came as somewhat of a shock to me. And I did have to, when I left CBS, I did have to say to myself, well, what now?”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “And also this is a signal honor, so do it the best you can. And even if you fail, even if you do professionally, metaphorically, get your head blown off and not succeed, you won't have slithered away from it, walked away from it. And I did say to myself that there's no way that you can succeed. You can replace a water cronchite. You can succeed a Walter Cronkite, damn, but you can't replace him. And you had better not try to be a Walter Cronkite. You need to be the best end rather you can be. What I set out to do, and others will have to judge how well or how poorly I did it.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “Short answer is yes, of course I did. For one thing, a number of people, including a number of people who care about me and love me, personally begged me not to take the job behind Croncreate. I had offers to do similar work at both NBC and ABC because their argument was, in fact, one of them just told me flatly said in Texas language he said, Dan, the first person who comes in after Cronki is going to get his head blown off professionally, metaphorically. There's no way you can succeed a cronkite, a legend. So go someplace though, go anyplace else. And so I did have some trepidation about it. But frankly, it was such an honor and also such a challenge that I found myself saying, you don't run away from challenges.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “And this is fundamental understanding, President Nixon and his administration, I think, is it wasn't enough for him to defeat his political opponents. He sought to destroy his political opponents. And that's what the whole business of break-ins and what became for shorthand Watergate was about. But there was this important difference. In the end, Richard Nixon believed in the institutions that give us the check and balance on government. For example, when the Supreme Court made a decision, It was devastating Richard Nixon. No argument, he accepted it. And I'm not here to speak well of Richard Nixon, who hurt the country dramatically. But there's a big difference between someone who in the end believes in these institutions of government at a Donald Trump who sought to really destroy those very institutions. That's a big difference.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Well, there's certainly similarities between President Trump and what we'll call the Trump years and Richard Nixon in his years. However, I do think it's important, David, to emphasize that it's a different time. And in many ways, what has been happening with President Trump and is still happening is much more serious than what happened during the Nixon time. Now, the similarity. You mentioned here, among them that President Nixon sought to subvert the election, what Nixon wanted to do.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “On the other hand, I never believed that the president was some descendant of a sun god. He's a citizen, another citizen. He's been honored. So I wanted to get to the question. So your question was, well, did I ever regret it? No, because, you know, in the moment you do what you think is the best thing to do and you live with it. Recognize if it became controversial, that's true.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “But you get the picture that the things are beginning to close in on President Nixon and this so-called news conference was basically to be a rally in support of him. And he had already established from time to time he'd done it with me before. He had done it with other reporters. If he thought you might be going to ask a tough question, he'd try to throw you off balance a little. He done any number of times before then. I recognized him for what it was. And it wasn't something I'd planned out. It wasn't something I thought. Basically, I wanted to get on with my question. I wanted to get past this and get to the question. So it was an instantaneous, spontaneous response to his trying to knock me off balance. And, you know, for better or worse, David, my attitude as White has corresponded. First of all, you never met anybody who had more respect for the office of the presidency of the United States.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “I don't regret having done it because I've been around long enough to know that you can't play him over. This all unfolded in a matter of a few seconds. And you've described it reasonably well. There were a lot of booze in the audience, by the way. Some people didn't.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “I'm quite sure. I think it was 1968, but at any rate, by that time, you know, Walter had been told by any number of papers correspondents who'd gone to Vietnam, including myself, what the situation was, that the country was being lied to. But he wanted to see for himself, so he went for a few days, I think, I don't know, maybe a week, maybe as much as 10 days and came back. But, you know, that was a different era of television. They were really only two major news networks, ABC. It was not yet full, so you had CBS and NBC, were the only real national news networks around. And so the power that is the power to persuade, the power to influence of an evening news anchor was pretty much confined to CBS and NBC.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “Yes, it was that he went and came back. And I know because I talked to him during that period that he agonized over doing that. But it was obvious to anybody by that time. I think that was done in 1960. 68 or 9.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “And at that time, Jean, my wife, and my daughter, Robin, who was becoming an adult, took me aside and said, don't go. They just said, don't go. Please don't go because we have a bad feeling about it. And we think if you go, he may not come back this time. That was the toughest call.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Saying to myself again, I think this could be one of the great stories of my generation. And if I'm to be the world class Journalist that I aspire to be. Then I need to cover this story. I need to go. It's imperative for me to go. And fair to say that Jean, my wife, now of 62 years, was always very supportive. And, you know, she said, look, this is not something that... You're ever going to be happy about it if you don't go. Stay as little time as you can and come back safe. But you know, if you're a journalist of the kind that I tried to be at CBS News at that time, David, you have these conversations from time to time with your wife, particularly as the children are growing up, that the only time Gene asked me not to go was later when we went into Afghanistan. This was 1980.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Yes, I did. I did, David, but not enough. What had happened is... My family and I, we had two small children. My daughter was, what, two and a half, maybe three, my son was one and a half. Anyway, we were moved to London from Washington. And I went to Vietnam. I asked to go. CBS news being what it was and still is for that matter, that you volunteered to go. And I asked to go to Vietnam. And the answer is while I was in Vietnam, that my family was in London, because we had moved there and the children were in school. And frankly, when I went, I never intended to stay as long as I did. I intended to be there two and a half, maybe three months. But the answer to your core question is yes, as a father and a husband and two very small children. Obviously my wife and I talked it over, but I would have to say. really wanted to go.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “When that started happening in every neighborhood in the country, that's when public opinion began to turn against the war.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “And you didn't have to be an expert on military affairs or very experienced in politics that matter, just to know that the gap between what the country's leadership was saying about what was happening on the ground in Vietnam and what in fact was happening in Vietnam. And if you're a reporter, you're out there every day, weekend, week out, and you see that difference, that I do think that for a long time American public opinion supported the war. And it wasn't until substantial casualties started coming back home to the kid down the street who last year was the quarterback on the football team with the point guard on the basketball team. Came back and the flag drape casket or came back without his arms or legs or blind.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Well, the reason I said that is because I do believe it to be true, that we had a situation where the leadership of the country, not just the president, but the almost the entire leadership of the country was telling the population of the United States of America that things were going pretty well in Vietnam. It was always accentuate the positive. We're making progress, so forth and so on. The reality on the ground was never that. And that I can remember when I first went to Vietnam, which was let us remind us a real green jungle hell. People who had to fight the war, and for civilians who were there. You could see that the forces led by the United States were not making the kind of progress that Washington continued to say they were.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Of the whole four day period there. The emotional wallop, the full emotional wallop, didn't hit me and other reporters who covered, I think, to a week or ten days after was delayed emotional slam once you could think about what had happened. But while it was happening, everything concentrated cover the story. Do the best you can. Try to be at it and do your best because you may not get another story like this in your old lifetime.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “And then behind that, because we're greedy, there is, and oh, by the way, Lord, if you do give me the biggest story, because you please let me be at or near my best. On that day But when the Kennedy assassination at once, I was able to study myself, and it took a few minutes to kind of absorb things and study myself. Then you get what tennis players call zoned. Everything else disappears from your head. I call my wife very briefly and said, you know, I love you, take care of the kids. This is going to be a really important thing to do. And then you go about the work. As a result of that, through the four dark days Friday when the president was assassinated Saturday when the assassin was being questioned and Sunday went incredibly, it still seems almost incredible. The assassin was assassinated. And then we had the funeral of the president in Washington. A majority of the country was dealing with their own personal emotions and their reaction to this news at that time. We were working as reporters around the clock. I don't think I slept more than two or three hours.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Just push them so far down that you can concentrate on the story, or you're going to kind of lose it and not be able to function as you should as a pro. And I can remember that moment saying to myself, one of my father's favorite words was steady and to say steady, steady, steady, get hold. And then you realize that you have to be trying to be at or near your best. Because David, you know very well with reporters that every reporter's prayer, whether he or she will admit it or not, every reporter's prayer is God give me the big story.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Well, first of all, it all happened very quickly. Realization the president has been someone who's taken a shot at the president. Not only did they take a shot at him, he was hit, he was wounded, perhaps fatally. Then quickly we confirmed that he was indeed dead. This was an enormous sledgehammer, an emotional sledgehammer to the heart. And on a personal level, I was frankly shaken by it. And there is that moment, and reporters who cover both Big news such as this is a common thing to have happened. There's a moment in which you can go eat one of two ways. Either going to steady yourself by pushing down your own emotions, your own thoughts about your own personal feelings about the story.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “So again, to use a clich ⁇, is the glass half full or half empty? I think half so much. The effect of the matter is that we have deep and abiding racial problems in the country, many of which we just have not addressed. But have we come a long way since the early sixties in Martin Luther King's time? Yes, do we have a very long way still to go a resounding yes?”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “Of the day. That we had conversation about, for example, I can remember several times when we said, do we think a black person can ever be a governor of a southern Lord, we think a black person could ever be a congressman. And the general, I would say, overwhelming belief was, well, not in our lifetimes. And nobody would even discuss the possibility of a person of color becoming predator in the United States. So, you know, and now we've had Barack Obama not only was elected president, but he was re-elected presid Two terms. For example, that's a measurement. We've made a lot of progress. On the other hand, A lot of the basic problems remain the same.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Well, it's a question I consider from time to time, and Franklin try to remind myself to consider it. In some ways, we've made remarkable progress. The kind of progress that when I was covering the civil rights movement in the early 1962 and how reporters are we. Around after midnight over perhaps an adult bever”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “He was shot to death by a cowardly assassin in the grass across the street from your home in front of his wife and children, and that almost nobody spoke up about it. I mean, where are the people who go to church every Sunday? I mean, these are the kinds of thoughts I was having at this time. Surely not everybody agrees with this, but as one learned, the situation was that there were a lot of some people who were concerned about it, but they didn't speak up partly out of fear, partly out of it would cost them something.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Well, it was life-changing. When I say it was disturbed by it, you know, I had conversations with my own conscience about along the lines of, quite frankly, where have I been? I mean, woke is sort of a common word now, woke, but it's very difficult to explain. But coming out of Texas, as I did, certainly racial segregation had been a fact of life for me ever since I'd been born. But just to see the level of hate and for example it was inconceivable to me that given the kinds of things that were happening such as the assassination of Medgare Evers, a black man who was doing great work trying to get more African Americans to vote.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “out violets sometimes lethal violence that was perpetrated on people of color by the power structure or the deep south at that time. It was a revelation to me, a shock to me, as I say, it changed me as a person forever and changed me as a professional.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Well, to put it directly, David, covering Don to Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, as I did, coming as I had from a state which had institutionalized racism itself, Texas covering Dr. King and the civil rights, we would change me as a person, and it changed me as a professional, that I had never seen anything close to the violence and really deep-seated hate to which I was exposed when I began covering Dr. King in the civil rights movement. And it's sometimes hard to explain. I mean, Texas had institutionalized racism, make no mistake about deeply segregated. But I had not seen, for example, that, heard about the Ku Klux Klan, but I'd never seen a Klan rally until I got begin covering for CBS News, and I had never seen a kind of straight”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “If I was going to make it at CBSUs, I had to raise my game a lot. In the arrogance of youth, I thought I was a pretty good reporter, and I could write some. Couldn't spell with a damn, but I could write. But when I got to CBS News and saw the level of talent and the ability and experience there that I realized I had to raise my cane, then it is true that I was in Dallas as a consequence of having been had the Southern and Southwest Bureau. I was put in charge of the coverage of President Kennedy's strip to Dallas in 1963. So I took myself off of covering Dr. Martin Luther King, which I'd be spending a good deal of time doing, and was in Dallas at the time of the assassination.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “Well, it was an incredible thing that in my dreams. But only in my dreams. I could see myself someday maybe working for CBSUs, but it was such a distant dream that I didn't think of it very often. And when the hurricane came in and the great hurricane Carla, which was the largest hurricane on record at that time and I think still the largest hurricane in the Gulf, which caught the ICBS, when CBS News hired me as a correspondent, when I first came to work in 1962, I walked with legends of separate Collingwood, the Murrow boys were still there, Ed Murrow had just left, but was around knew him. But I realized, David, that”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “Say the least, he didn't. That's true. Lyndon Johnson, we were at his ranch. I'd never been to his ranch before. And I needed to call back to the radio station. Remember, there are no cell phones. And it was a small office there with a phone in it. And so I just got into the office to make a quick call to my station back in Houston. And Lyndon Johnson himself passed by, looked in the door, saw me on his telephone, and ripped the telephone out of my hands with my boss in Houston at the end. And he said, in effect, this is almost a direct quote, I don't know who this young pissant is on my phone, but whoever he is, he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about and hung up.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “That's very true that the city editor, a guy named Cobb, Dan Cobb, took me aside and said, Dan, you're never going to make it a newspaper. You spend too much time over the dictionary. And he knew that I'd worked at the radio station in Huntsville College. So the newspaper owned a radio station, and he sent me to the radio station. And fortunately, at the radio station, They put me on. And that began a career in radio, which of course eventually led to career in television.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “That's an absolute true story. That, you know, my dream, although I'd listened to great broadcasters, my dream was always to be a big byline reporter for the Houston Chronicle of the Houston Post. That was as far as my dream could carry. But I was then and have been ever since and am now a remarkably poor speller. Which is a tough vulnerability to have if you want to be a newspaper reporter”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “So I went to college in the summers to get through in three years, and I did volunteer in the Marines. Once I got in and they eventually found out that I indeed had had rheumatic fever, then they sent me right out. So that's the reason I say of a very short and undistinguished career in the Marines.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “Well, I did want in, rheumatic having had rheumatic favorite was a so called disqualifying disease that you were not supposed to be in the military if you'd had rheumatic fever. And when they ask you when you apply for the service, I was 4F in the draft. We had a draft at that time. I was not eligible to be. So when a volunteered for the Marines, they have a box you're supposed to check. Have you ever had this or that? When it came to rheumatic fever, I had had rheumatic fever. But I didn't check the box. So in effect, I lied to them. But it may seem strange here as we enter soon the third decade of the 21st century, but at that time, David, I felt it was my responsibility to go. I had played high school football, I was strong. And frankly, my fear was that the Korean war would come and go and I would not have volunteered because my mother wanted me to finish college.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “Was segregated society at that time. I would do the African American, the Black High School Games one night. I would do the white high school games another night. I would do the college games on Saturday. And then when they had B team games, I would do those as well. And what this allowed me to do, and I don't want to lose our listeners here back in the weeds, but when you do a lot of play-by-play work, there is no script. And after I graduated from college, after I left that small radio station, I really didn't know it, but it was already a very strong ad liber. I could hold air and make some sense of it. So after a brief scent in the Marine Corps, I have one of the shortest and least distinguished records in the whole history of the Marines.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Well, that's very perceptive, David, because in fact, it was very important that play-by-play sports work that I did at this small, out-of-the-way radio station made of me, I have many weaknesses as a broadcaster, as a journalist, but one of my strengths was always I was a good head liber. Things like election night or some breaking news where you don't have a script you can hold air. Because at that little radio station in Huntsville, that 250-watt radio station during football season, for example, I would do four games a week. I would do the”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Yes. Well, after the football scholarship, the dreams of the scholarship fell away, I wound up among the jobs that Hugh Cunningham arranged me to get was a part-time job at the local radio station. Now remember Hanspool's whole population is about 2,500. That includes 900 students. The radio station was a 250 watt That's the smallest radio station allowed over the regular channels. But working at that radio station turned out to be a big break for me.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “I did. Fortunately for me, the late Hugh Cunningham was a fairly new journalism professor. They had not had journalism for very long. But he was the journalism professor, and he was just terrific to me. He's now long gone. Recognized my situation, which was, I was barely able with my mother cashing an old World War II bond to pay the tuition. I had no way to support myself in college. Once it was clear I wasn't going to get the football scholarship. So Hugh Cunningham, the journalism professor, took me under his wing. I actually slept in the living room of his home. For a short while while he got me a series of part time jobs allowed me to stay in college, and he mentored me and taught me the three and a half years I was at Houston.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “But I went, by the way, the tuition at San Houston State Teachers College started in midterm 1950. What would you guess the full tuition for the semester was?”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “This was the only thing we're studying. Unfortunately, I was terrible in math and I had no interest in it. But I wound up going to this small teachers college. And it's now a big state university, San Houston State University. But at the time I went there. Was a small teacher college, I think they had 900 students when I started. And I went there hoping against hope that I could get a football scholarship. I played high school football at a fairly well at the highest high school level in Texas, which, as you know, is.”

    2020-12-10 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 422 — Dan Rather · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source