Dan Rather: Stories of a Lifetime
Written and Narrated By: Dan Rather
Length: 1 hr and 24 mins
Charming and folksy, even when touching on the traumatic and the tragic…
I gotta tell ya, I wasn’t all that into Dan Rather when he was anchoring the news. Dunno exactly why, but maybe there was a certain, however slight, sense of smugness that I sensed from him. His coming on the day after the 2000 election and saying everyone had egg on their faces after declaring a winner too soon felt kinda good to me, toad that I am (No offense to toads!).
But there is absolutely NOOOO smugness here, no hubris, nothing but charm and humility in his Stories of a Lifetime. Nope, it opens with a good-humored chuckle gotten at his own expense when his whipsmart wife comes back with a quip that puts him in his place and upends his view of how he became such a “grand” legend. Definitely chuckle-worthy, and kudos to his wife.
This performance in the Minetta Lane Theater has him waxing just a tad nostalgic and reminding all and sundry about just what all a person can bear witness to over the course of a long and well-lived life. From catastrophic illness as a child that left him frail—until his father sent him out to work to build his stamina up—all the way through the many many stories he covered as a journalist. From working in a teensy weensy shack of a “radio station” through being on the ground in Vietnam to having a code name with Martin Luther King Jr. to being on the wrong side of the bridge when JFK was assassinated to covering Watergate and all the way to anchoring the CBS Evening News, this little audio work has it all.
Plus, Rather has never been one to stint on emotions, and he’s upfront about it all. I kinda heard tears in his voice at times, just as I heard horror when he shared about, say, what he saw in Vietnam and how it left him with nightmares, even tho’ he had no illusions that he had it easy compared to the boys doing the fighting and the dying. There are just as many laughs in this too, tho, so don’t worry. His relating of all is done with such good grace that it comes off as a really kind uncle (One who can laugh at himself) sharing at the fireside after a good meal.
Warm and funny, this is all so very enjoyable, and I felt a sense of hope in seeing how the country has gone through such DARK times, such eras of cruelty and upheaval, and has always rode the wave back to better days. It’s simply Life’s cycle, and hopefully we can rebound.
I saw reviewers get reeeeeally peeved that Rather had the temerity to call Trump out. Apparently, the man, now no longer an anchorman, should NOT have an opinion, and apparently his over 80 years on the planet, the many things he witnessed and covered, should NOT confer wisdom through experience. Nope, they thought he should just tell amusing little anecdotes and call it a day—’twas yet another, they said, example of biased liberal media.
Tsk, tsk. If you canNOT stand to hear opinions, go elsewhere. I mean, they had no problem with Rather depicting Richard Nixon as kinda creepy, so there you go.
InCREDibly short, this little Listen is inCREDibly engaging. I particularly liked the stories of how he was raised. It wasn’t the good neighbor stories (who just happened to be all white) that, say, Ben Sasse decries we all need to get back to. No, this was someone who as a boy saw humanity in every color even tho’ Texas was horribly segregated and somewhat violent, someone who as a young man met the challenge of covering violence done to others in the name of color differences, who stood with his father as he stood for “colored” men.
THAT’S the kinda man I want to listen to, to hear history from. No ducking the hard issues, some hard-won wisdom thrown in, and a man who’s seen the best, and more often has seen the worst.
And like I said? Chuckle-worthy inDEEd!
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