Roger Kimball is completely on-target about all of this Walter Cronkite adulation.
He didn’t research or write the news. He read it. He emitted the same platitudes every other news reader mouthed. He did so, however, with a sort of cardigan authenticity that used car salesmen would climb naked over broken bottles to emulate.
…
Michael Jackson was famous for inventing a dance step called the moonwalk in which the dancer seems to float backwards while walking in place. Walter Cronkite did something similar. He seemed to float above the yapping clamor of common opinion. At bottom, though, he merely reflected it.
When I was a kid I liked Walter Cronkite. By the time I became an adult I knew he was a phony.
