Keith Olbermann has written a lovely
essay about Peter Jennings. Olbermann doesn't know Jennings, just watched his progress.
It's a gorgeous piece of writing....
But for me, Jennings has been much more than just a mandarin of the industry. He is the personification of perseverance. It is amazing to remember that ABC first appointed him to anchor its news in 1965 — sixteen years before Dan Rather got the job at CBS and eighteen before Tom Brokaw at NBC.
Jennings was horribly overwhelmed, subjected to vicious criticism, and removed from the chair at the end of 1967. In those days, even at the then turnover-happy ABC, that should've been the end of his career.
But instead of letting that happen, or blaming somebody else, he took some of what was being said against him — too green, too inexperienced, not worldly enough —and decided to do something about it.
He dived in at the deep end, and for the next fifteen years, covered the world for ABC, and had become an expert in America's place in it, long before the wheel turned again in 1978 and Roone Arledge asked him to anchor from London while Frank Reynolds hosted from Washington and Max Robinson from Chicago.
It wasn't exactly 40 years in the desert, but it was a dedication to self-improvement, to self-expansion, that is almost unimaginable in television today, as unlikely as the lightest weight local anchor you can think of, setting off for the Middle East to become an investigative reporter focusing on terrorism.
As the asshole says, read the whole thing.
And then you tell me that this Jennings guy doesn't have a clue, is a tool of the RWCM. Haha. He knows more than you will ever know.
And if you aren't praying for his recovery, you're an asshole.
So says I.