Walter Cronkite, 1916-2009

As everyone has heard by now, Walter Cronkite passed away yesterday at the age of 92. Clearly no media member will ever hold the influence or public trust like he did, and we're all worse off for not having a figure like him around anymore.

I have to say though, I am - in a somewhat perverse way - pleasantly surprised that I could not find a single article or blog post on a right-wing website that was a 100% laudatory or respectful obit on him. Every post I read had some reference to him losing the war in Vietnam, being a go-to liberal media figure, his dementia in his final years, etc.

Here I was all ready to fire off a post telling them what they could go do with themselves if they sang his praises. After all, had he made his end of broadcast speech on Vietnam in 2009, Michelle Malkin would have screamed that he was a Vietnamese sympathizer, the National Review Online would have figuratively tarred and feathered him, Jonah Goldberg would have said that this exposed him as just another cheese-eating surrender monkey dirty hippie liberal defeatocrat, and the entire right-wing establishment would organize a wave of complaint phone calls to CBS that would have gotten him fired by noon the next day. So any praise of him from their side would have been completely disingenuous.

No matter how low or disgusting you might think their response has been, you can't say it's been dishonest. At least they're being consistent and true to themselves, for whatever that's worth. Well done guys.