The NY Times reports the story. On this date in 1968, CBS News Anchor Walter Cronkite---the most trusted man in America---told his audience the Vietnam war was a stalemate.
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| Photo by Tim Lennox, 1970, Da Nang |
“To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that were are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.”(Cronkite in 1968)
Reading this and recalling those times, it strikes me that today, in spite of endless cable news commentary and opinion, there is no one to effectively point out our current unsatisfactory conclusion.
ReplyDeleteThanks Charles....there are still some excellent columnists, but I suspect people read only those with whom they tend to agree. Cronkite crossed all kinds of lines that existed at the time, and what people thought of his commentary probably also aligned with their existing beliefs.
ReplyDeleteTim