Dan Rather: Pushed off the anchor chair and now kicked out the door…

Dan Rather – as he appeared in the fall of 2004 – reporting the bogus story about President Bush’s military service that sealed his professional fate…

On 9 March 2005, I published this homage to Dan Rather’s ignominious comeuppance after his colleagues and bosses at CBS finally did to him what he had done to Walter Cronkite 24 years earlier, which was to conspire to push him off his news-anchor chair. But where there was genuine sorrow at Cronkite’s dethroning, only crocodile tears were shed when Rather fell.

However, though bloodied, Rather remained unbowed. And such was his larger-than-life ego that virtually no one remotely familiar with his Stetson pride (except me – see “NOTE” below) thought that he would ride off into the sunset as the cameras faded to black on his career. Indeed, true to form, within days Rather was announcing on Larry King Live and Late Night With David Letterman that CBS had agreed to reassign him as a feature reporter on its flagship news program 60 Minutes.

But it now seems clear that Dan was just whistling Dixie. Because his bosses never entertained any notion of retaining him in such a high-profile position; especially since they were already wooing his professional antithesis, Katie Couric of the NBC TODAY Show, to be the new face of CBS News. Nevertheless, it came as a shock to many yesterday – just weeks after Katie was hired – when news broke that there was no more room for Rather anywhere at CBS:

NOTE: For the record, here’s what I predicted would be his fate months ago:

….despite his gallant efforts to maintain his Texas strut, Dan will clearly now hobble into TV news oblivion.

So, here’s a tip of the Stetson to you Dan. We’ll see you down the road…

Dan Rather, CBS News