To the Moon, Walter!

Pardon the pun, but I marvel at the cosmic happenstance of Walter Cronkite dying a mere three days before the 40th anniversary of man’s first steps on the moon. Between coverage of these two events, I’d venture to guess that there hasn’t been that much black and white footage floating around the airwaves at any one time (outside of TCM, that is) since the Nixon Administration. The broadcast remembrances of Uncle Walter and the celebrations of the Apollo 11 mission which have aired over the last several days brought back quite a few memories from my youth (granted, I was only 1 during the first Apollo moon landing, but I certainly remember a couple of the latter moon shots). It also caused me to reflect on the fact that mine is the last generation that will remember Walter Cronkite as America’s anchorman and will also likely be the last generation that will remember when a human being set foot on the moon. I will address that last point in a subsequent blog entry. Today I would like to talk about the fact that I am apparently getting old if not downright crotchety and the reason why I say this has much to do with the death of Walter Cronkite and with how today’s young adults may perceive those glorious days of July, 1969.

This past Monday I was listening to a couple of radio personalities in their late 20’s, early 30’s talking about the death of Walter Cronkite (whose name they continued to mispronounce “Conkrite.”) It was fairly clear that they really didn’t have a full understanding of who he was and what he meant to American journalism at a very pivotal point in its history. They were trying to give some sort of respect to the man whose name they had doubtless heard from their parents and elders but for whom they had no recognition beyond that. When I was a kid, Walter Cronkite was a familiar face at our nightly dinner table. I suspect he was the dinner guest of many American households in the 60’s and 70’s. Back in those days you had a choice between CBS, NBC and ABC for your nightly news. If you wanted to go “unconventional” in your television news viewing, you waited a half hour and watched MacNeil/Lehrer on PBS (and that option didn’t even present itself until the mid 70’s). For the better part of his 19 year run at the desk of the CBS Evening News, Cronkite owned the airwaves. This dominance was all the more remarkable when examining the luminaries with whom he was competing for viewership in a small and undiluted market. He managed to beat out Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and John Chancellor at NBC. Even more remarkable was the parade of nine different anchors and co-anchors that ABC tried to put up against the man, a group which included Howard K. Smith, Harry Reasoner, Frank Reynolds and Peter Jennings (twice). I really don’t know how to provide a modern day analogue for Walter Cronkite. That makes it very difficult to explain to someone under the age of, say, 30, exactly how Walter Cronkite influenced us, how someone could actually earn the title “Most Trusted Man in America” in an era when the country was in the clutches of phenomenal distrust and cynicism. We have reached a point where information is transmitted in real-time via the Internet. It has reached the point in many cases where the term “news” is almost an oxymoron. I am reluctant to call the transmission of unfiltered, unverified information “news.” In my lexicon, “news” is a consumable commodity like food. And like food, it should be carefully inspected and rid of impurities before serving. And the server should be able to take pride in what he or she is presenting, knowing full well that what is brought to the table has been prepared properly and is of the highest possible quality. It saddens me to think back to just a few years ago when Dan Rather, Cronkite’s successor at the CBS Evening News, was disciplined for failing to live up to this relatively basic standard when delivering an investigative report into former president George W. Bush’s service in the military reserves. Talk about a squandered ineritence!

So, how to describe Walter Cronkite to someone who simply cannot envision a world without the internet and with only three choices in television news? I don’t know that it can be done. After all, we are living in challenging if not outright frightening times this very day. We have our own Vietnam with which to contend. We have economic strife just as bad, if not much worse, than that which this country endured during Cronkite’s watch. There is concern we are on the eve of what could be a devastating influenza pandemic. There is constant sturm und drang in Washington, perhaps not on the scale of Watergate, but certainly myriad reasons to distrust what our nation’s leaders are up to at any given time. The problem of distrust is certainly raging in a handful of state capitals throughout the country. To whom are we turning en masse every night to walk us through it? Jon Stewart? Perez Hilton? The answer is, there is nobody with whom we can possibly compare Walter Cronkite. Therefore, Walter Cronkite should remain the standard against whom all broadcast journalists should be measured, and that means it is essential that his work and his ethics continue to be studied and emulated.

And now, to the moon, or at least the topic of Apollo 11. On the same day that one radio show was discussing the passing of Walter Cronkite, another radio show’s on-air staff was discussing the planting of the American flag on the moon and their impressions that it was an act of arrogance. I found this to be an astounding observation which lacked historical perspective. What was apparently being overlooked (or perhaps not even considered) was the fact that the USA of 1969 was a much different nation than the USA of 2009. The planting of an American flag on the moon’s surface represented far more than some sort of a galactic imperialistic mindset or even that of global superiority.

What the young hosts of the radio program did not take into account was that fact that on July 20, 1969, the United States was a nation divided by many generational, racial and political factions. We were still licking our wounds from a scarring 1968. The moon landing gave most of the country an opportunity to pause for a moment and feel good about itself. While there were certainly critics of the program at that time, it was pretty clear that most of the nation took extreme pride in their country if only for that day. Arrogant? I don’t view it that way. Nobody ever (seriously or officially) attempted to “claim” the moon in the name of the United States. It was simply a way to mark that we were there. As a matter of fact, the plaque that the Apollo 11 astronauts left on the moon states, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind." Given the fact that the USA was embroiled in a space race with the Soviet Union at the time of the moon landing, the words which were chosen to commemorate our nation winning that enormous leg of the race were not the least bit boastful when clearly the opportunity existed to exploit the moment.

We should not be quick to confuse national pride with arrogance. There is no shame in taking pride in the great accomplishments of our country and our fellow citizens. Like all facets of our lives, we need to find an appropriate balance and temper our behaviors accordingly. Likewise, we should not jump to knee-jerk conclusions that every flag-waving opportunity is an effort to cram America down the throats of others or ourselves. If and when the time ever comes to close the book on the United States, there is a significant chance that the moon landing will stand out as among its greatest, if not the greatest, achievement. We should not tarnish that memory by making it out to be anything other than what it truly was – a great day to be an American. And that’s perfectly okay.