Start here...
then go here...
and here, and here, and then, for shits and giggles, go here
and give your best guess as to when Dan Rather will retire.
I hope Dan Rather retires. He's an idiot. And not just because he's a
crappy reporter, although that can't be too overplayed, but because of
another, personal observation. In 1993, the husband and I were students
at Iowa State when the 500 year flood came through Ames. Des Moines,
about thirty-five miles south, was hit much harder. Their idiotically
placed waterworks were flooded and, suddenly, there was no potable
water in a city of a quarter-million people. The husband's family was
living in Des Moines and we found ourselves making regular runs from
Ames to provide them with bottled water as there was none to be found
in Des Moines. The city was caught with its pants down, in other words.
On one trip down there, the husband and I decided to go and help
sandbag to get the waterworks back online. This wasn't too far from his
parents' house and we had to park at a local college and then cross a
bridge to get to where the sandbagging was going on. All of the
national anchors and their various satellite trucks were set up on this
bridge. First we passed Tom Brokaw, who was dressed in a denim shirt
and jeans and was chatting amiably with a local. Then we passed Peter
Jennings, dressed identically to Brokaw, who was on one of those huge
cellular phones that were common during that era, shouting into it,
trying to suss something out with people who were elsewhere. Then we
passed Dan Rather. Who was chatting with someone and who was wearing hip waders.
Even though he was nowhere near the water.
Even though he never went anywhere near the water.
The husband and I were closer to the water whilst sandbagging than Dan Rather ever was. He was wearing hip waders.
We were wearing t-shirts, shorts and tennis shoes. And we were
sandbagging on a hot, sunny Iowa summer's day. He must have been hotter
than hell, yet he never took the freakin' things off. When we left a
few hours later, he was still wearing them. Let's just say that he was
the running joke of the sandbag circle.