There is a way in which the country’s getting worse has made things a little easier for me. Back when state bureaucracy first got its hooks into me, average Janes and Joes were much more likely to respond to a story like mine with incredulity. That was a mere five years ago.

In that time we have seen so many instances of people in power (Bush, Cheney, Gonzalez, Kerik, Haggard, Hastert, Delay, Foley, etc. ad nauseum) getting away with so many bad things (Iraq, profiteering, cronyism, hypocrisy, US attorney firings, etc. ad nauseum again) that it’s almost too easy to believe a tale of a similar kind of political payback happening at the state level, even in bucolic, Disney-esque Vermont.

My thinking about the credulity-incredulity spectrum was triggered today by a good article about Dan Rather and his suit against CBS, Viacom, and their execs whom Rather claims were complicit in going after him for political reasons.

I’ve gone back and forth in my opinions about Dan Rather for decades. His 1974 exchange with President Nixon was both awful and wonderful. Awful for its lack of dignity; wonderful because so many of us were as weary of Nixon then as we are now of Bush, and dadgum it all, it was about time Nixon got pulled up short. I prefer Murrow’s journalistic style (quietly nail the suckers with facts), which I think serves better overall than Rather’s in-your-face tactics, but even so one can’t deny that Rather has served us all well on many occasions with terrific reportage (e.g. Iran Contra).

When I first read about his suit against CBS et al. I rolled my eyes and thought something on the order of “grandstand.” But the more I’ve read, the more I appreciate what Rather is doing. And I absolutely identify with his experience of doing one’s job well, and the indescribable sting of that being “rewarded” with one’s career being trashed.

My early experience with Vermont’s bureaucracy matched Rather’s (as reported in the article here) : finding it hard to believe what was happening, seeing friends and colleagues fall away, scrambling to find some way to being reason to prevail, to no avail. All those things in the Rather story rang true. And the point at which I was thoroughly convinced that Rather is not possessed of the more specious motives attributed to him was this:

Dan Rather’s Last Big Story Is Himself — New York Magazine
Rather was anguished. “For two years he’s agonized about his reputation and finally said the hell with it,” says his close friend David Buksbaum, a former CBS News producer who accompanied Rather on several of his Central Park walks. “He couldn’t believe the company he bled for for 40 years would do it to him. It’s not about money, it’s not even about ego. It’s about vindication.”

When someone has been through the kind of experience Rather says he’s been through, and pursues a course such a Rather is pursuing, a best friend is who will know that vindication is the reason.

I hope Rather gets his vindication. I got mine when I prevailed on appeal against the malpractice charges against me. Vindication is good, but justice would be better. That hasn’t happened yet in my case, though I still hope to see it someday. I’ll write more about that another time.

Peace.

Deborah Alicen