Old school

I’m saddened to hear about the death of long-time (as in forever) broadcaster Daniel Schorr, but a little less so when I saw that he was 93. I figured him for not a day over 87. On the radio, at least, he seemed to still have all his marbles… maybe that was just an act, like his curmedgon thing… which I suspect, was no act.
Anyway, I always enjoyed his recitation of conventional wisdom on National ‘Pologist Radio (NPR), not for the conventional wisdom itself, which is every bit as worthless coming from NPR’s airwaves as it is on any of the broadcast or cable, print or web media, but because Dan Schorr seemed so damned apologetic about having to do it that way. It just struck me that in his curmudgeonly heart, he’d rather just have said something like “You’re all assholes; you know this script you want me to read is crap; the Government is full of as much bullshit now as when Tricky Dick was around.” Maybe, maybe not…
As a Jewish guy born in the Bronx to parents of Byelorussian extraction (which is vaguely my own background), I found that Schorr’s shtick always resonated with me… the fact that he regarded his greatest achievement not his various broadcast awards or his three Emmy Awards, or even arranging the first television interview with Nikita Krushchev (who rewarded him by banning him from returning to the USSR!),,, but the fact that he ended up on Richard NIxon’s enemies list… well… how can you not admire such a man, pretty much regardless of anything else he ever did (and Schorr was a pretty damned fair journalist in his own right, as attested to in his lengthy obit.).
Anyway, Schorr the professional pain in the ass– the guy who maniacally leaked things before the days of “Wiki-leaks,” who lived to fight the power and stick it to the man, often even when “the man” was his employer… is the kind of “old school” journo that is an all-too-literally dying breed in our pathetic era of “he-said, she said, say,what did Lindsay Lohan say?” ersatz journalism. He’s been around so long, I forgot he was a protege of Edward R. Murrow. Well, time seems to be marching on. God damn it.
Rest in peace, Mr. Schorr. Rest in peace. .
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