Why do you cry, when Walter Cronkite dies?

[omega minimo]

Why do you cry, omega minimo, when Walter Cronkite dies?

I don't know why I cry.

I don't know why I cry, when I see JFK, RFK and MLK.

All I know is that when I was a child, the whole nation was crying.



Link to tribute to Walter Cronkite, posted June 20:
Walter Cronkite, The Most Trusted Man In a Shock and Awed America
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=5890014




Nov. 2, 1963
Cronkite Interview of JFK on Vietnam War

April 4, 1968
from Robert F. Kennedy's Statement on Dr. King's Death:

"My favorite poem, my -- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black."



And that's the way it still is, July 17, 2009.

Rest in Peace, dear Walter. We love you. :cry: :loveya: :toast: :grouphug:

[Stinky The Clown]

1. I think we cry because they were parts of our lives and with them dies a small bit of us

We see in their deaths our own inexorable march to our own end.

Ever was it thus and ever shall it be. The human condition.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

2. Yes -

we move up in the family hierarchy, and now we're the elders.

Never planned on any of this happening, actually...............................

[omega minimo]

6. It also speaks to the power of the medium

to connect people, even as (relatively) dispassionate as the news delivery style was.... the times transcended that. My reaction surprised me.

[liberalmuse]

3. I cry because Walter Cronkite represented a decent human being to me.

And now he is gone. And I don't know if we'll ever see the likes of him again.

[omega minimo]

4. Decent, serious professional while being a real human being, the presenter of amazing times.

[Historic NY]

5. Walter was one of us.

[omega minimo]

7. Very nice tribute. LOL

:toast: :pals:

[chill_wind]

8. Bookmarked your original link. Wonderful post I missed at the time.

Thanks o.m. KnR.

:grouphug:

[omega minimo]

9. Thank you, chill_wind

:pals:

[Maeve]

10. I cry for my youth, I cry for when I was naive...

I cry for when it helped to cry...

Godspeed, good soul, and may angels sing thee to sleep...

[Rick Myers]

11. Thank you...

Walter is The Most Trusted Man in the Country...

[omega minimo]

12. absolutely beautiful

now I'm crying again. :hug:

[Sukie]

13. Wonderful tribute to a wonderful man. Thank you. n/t

[omega minimo]

14. Cheers, Sukie!!

:toast:

[tilsammans]

15. True broadcast journalism, as defined by Cronkite, died years ago

I wish I could be more confident about it ever coming back.

[omega minimo]

16. True. Considering the broadcasters who might compare, after the last "Big Three"

retired, it seems Brian Williams is trying to carry on that dignified tradition. I don't watch network news, except Lehrer News Hour.

And as you say, he was a journalist, not just a presenter.

[uppityperson]

19. Very true about it all. RIP Mr Cronkite.

[donheld]

17. I don't

He had a wonderful, very full meaningful life. I wish him bon voyage.

[omega minimo]

26. ok

[Vidar]

18. K&R

[omega minimo]

20. .

:toast:

[omega minimo]

21. Link to the era

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6092225

[autorank]

22. Very well said k*r

[omega minimo]

25. Thanks

Nice to see you autorank :toast:

[autorank]

29. Lets hoist one for Walter

:toast:

He'd appreciate it.

[EFerrari]

23. I think Walter Cronkite was the first grown up that I ever saw cry for real.

Too many losses to process lately.

[omega minimo]

24. .

:hug:

[dixiegrrrrl]

27. I cry for the memories of an innocent time.

Cronkite represented our belief in Camelot.
Cronkite gave us permission to cry when Camelot ended.
Cronkite helped us transition past Camelot.
He and Edward R. Murrow will be remembered as real reporters, now of a time long gone.

[omega minimo]

28. Very eloquent. Thanks dixiegrrrrl

:hug:

[scarletwoman]

30. Because mourning Walter Conkrite is mourning for the lost America that I grew up in.

Walter Conkrite's time as our collective news anchor was part of a vanished era. An era in which broadcast news was independent of considerations of profit, an era in which business still honored the concept of an inherent social responsibility.

Those who are younger than we baby boomers who were born during the immediate aftermath of WWII probably can't even imagine that there was a such a time. The great collective patriotic project that the war effort made of our culture included a strongly ingrained sense of social conscience. The Great Depression and the New Deal were still fresh in memory, no one then would have tolerated the kind of greed that came into fashion in the Reagan era.

Just as today there are collectively understood social sanctions against overt racism in most polite company (excepting right wingers, of course); in post-WWII America, corporate social responsibility was a collectively understood socially sanctioned behavior.

It was a time of truce in the Class War. The big money people of the time they knew had to lay low, society at large was in no mood to put up with dishonorable acts on the part of big business, so overt greed and exploitation were restrained. People were proud of their Labor Unions, and the upward economic mobility that collective bargaining had made possible.

The journalism of Cronkite came out this era in which that social contract was still intact. It was being shredded bit by bit, of course, by the assassination of JFK on, but few of us understood how much was going to be lost, how far America would degenerate, how thoroughly corrupted and dysfunctional all our institutions would become.

And that is what I mourn when I mourn the passing of Walter Cronkite. I mourn the loss of the America in which trust and decency were the norm, not the exception.

sw