http://washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_07/019129.php

July 18, 2009

By: Hilzoy
Last Post

[...] I think that democracy, like any kind of community, takes effort. It needs to be maintained. People need to work at it. And the last five years have made me realize, yet again, that even when things seem really bad, they are not hopeless. There is always something you can do. [...]

All you can do is try. And as my grandmother used to say to us: it is not worthy of humanity to give up.

- - hilzoy 1:42 AM EDT

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Lately, maybe he has lost his mind, or maybe (like much of the "conservative movement") Cap'n Ed is simply doing what he gets paid to do.

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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/07/17/walter-cronkite-dead-at-92/

(Ed): [...] I have felt for a long time that both his fans and his opponents made far too much out of Cronkite, who was a good news reader [...]

- - Ed Morrissey

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?!?!?!? "GOOD NEWS READER" ?!?!?!?!?

Captain Ed, former citizen journalist, now paid by Malkin&Co., is full of crap - - and that's what he gets paid for.

Of course it's a good thing not to trust ANY individual or institution too much but Howard Kurtz reliably slaps together all the right wing themes today, and of course one of Kurtz's themes is that, instead of trusting CBS News, we should be paying more attention to right wing bloggers . . . like Ed Morrissey.

Ed Morrissey, who tells us that Walter Cronkite was a

?!?!?!? "GOOD NEWS READER" ?!?!?!?!?

I've worked at the old dairy building where Cronkite used to work on West 57th Street myself and I know the people there are mere mortals, not gods, but c'mon, Cronkite wasn't merely a broadcaster, and Ed Morrissey's statement is immensely ignorant and/or immensely dishonest.

?!?!?!? "GOOD NEWS READER" ?!?!?!?!?

I'm gonna let Uncle Walter answer that.

Here's a story Cronkite wrote in 1943, when he was working for UPI.

The story was published by the New York Times and elsewhere:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thedailymirror/2009/07/walter-cronkite-in-a-flying-fortress-over-germany-1943.html

Saturday, February 27, 1943

[...] I have just returned with a Flying Fortress crew from Wilhelmshaven, Germany.

For two hours, I sat through a vicious gun duel with German Focke-Wulf 190 fighter planes and I saw what it was like to bomb Hitler on his home grounds.

We fought off Hitler's fighers and dodged his guns. The Fortress I rod in came back without damage. But we had the element of luck on our side.

Other formations caugh the blast of fighter blows and we watched Fortresses and Liberators plucked out of the formations around us. [...]

- - Walter Cronkite, journalist, 1943

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(blogger pourmecoffee found this video clip, below)
http://twitter.com/pourmecoffee/status/2699391218
http://pourmecoffee.posterous.com/i-regret-that-in-our-attempt-to-establish-som

* * * * *

Here's a video clip of Walter Cronkite in 1996.

It's only 20 seconds long, and that was enough time to say everything that needed to be said:

http://www.newseum.org/news/news.aspx?item=nh_CRON090714_2

“I regret that in our attempt to establish some standards we didn’t make them stick.

We couldn’t find a way to pass them on to another generation.”

- - Walter Cronkite, 1996

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http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/07/stop-me-before-i-politicize-again.html

http://washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_07/019126.php

Go see.

Fiat justitia, ruat caelum.

Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.

The latin phrase is attributed to Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, but is also often attributed to William Murray who used it during the famous Somersett's Case in which he ruled that there was no legal basis for slavery in England.

Todd's idiocy is beyond comprehension.

- - robert lewis - - Thursday, July 16, 2009 09:25 AM

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Nicely done but you're giving a bit too much credit to William Murray (Lord Mansfield).

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http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/rights/slave_free.htm

Most plantation owners lived in Britain. They brought their household slaves back with them from trips to the Americas, and used them to perform domestic duties in Britain.

The celebrated Somerset ruling of 1772 [...] had a profound effect on slaves. Many of them misunderstood the ruling to mean that slaves were emancipated in Britain. This was not the case. The decision was that no slave could be forcibly removed from Britain and sold into slavery.

Despite Lord Mansfield's [that is, William Murray's] ruling, slave owners continued recapturing their runaway slaves and shipping them back to the colonies. Numerous newspaper advertisements of the time show that Black slaves were still being bought and sold in England. A few years later, in 1785, Mansfield himself ruled that 'black slaves in Britain were not entitled to be paid for their labour' (free Black people were, however, paid).

The legal status of African slaves in Britain and its colonies remained unclear until the early 19th century. In 1807, with the passing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, the slave trade became illegal; and 21 years later almost all Black men, women and children held in bondage in the British empire were granted their freedom.

http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/rights/slave_free.htm

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