On the Cutting Edge of Societal Satire

by Brit Hume

The History Channel is scheduled to air the controversial special report hosted by Peter Jennings which takes a look at CBS news anchor Dan Rather. The show - entitled, Is Dan Rather Going Nuts? - is being criticized as one journalist taking cheap shots at another.

The History Channel is airing the documentary as part of a salute to television journalists. Critics, most friends of Rather's, say this one goes too far.

"I've known Dan Rather for 20 years." Jennings said, waving off the criticism. "The guy is a fruitcake."

But the documentary includes an in-depth, no-holds barred interview with Rather's former co-host on the CBS Evening News, Connie Chung. Chung makes no bones about her dislike for Rather, who she sees as being behind the plot to have her demoted at CBS.

"They wanted to keep me on the payroll, hoping that would keep me quiet." She explained. "I ended up doing news breaks at 3 a.m. during the old movies, like the Billy Jack marathon or something. I started ad-libbing the news breaks just to see if anyone was even watching. No complaints, and some were pretty risqué."

Chung said getting a job with one of the big three networks was almost impossible for women, and harder for minorities, in the 1970's when she was breaking into the business. She turned to acting.

Laughing, she said more people remember an old laundry detergent commercial she made than the stories she's broke in her career, like the "instanail" adhesive fingernail fraud. "Thousands of women were victims of this company's scam...the adhesive they included with their plastic fingernails didn't hold...women all over America had their fingernails falling off in public...how embarrassing."  Chung said. "We were able to expose the company for what it was, a bunch of crooks. Does anyone remember that?"

She sadly shook her head. "No. All they remember is the stupid laundry detergent commercial, the one where I played the wife of a guy who ran a dry cleaner." She said with a chuckle. "He tells the lady that his cleaning method is a secret, and I pop out of the back and say we need more of this name brand detergent, and she says, "ancient Chinese secret, huh?"

Her next acting gig would change her life. She was a guest on a new show featuring a host named Maury Povich. "I played a Taiwanese lady who'd been sold to a Colombian drug lord and forced to spread sacred bird droppings on the cocoa fields by hand for fertilizer and good luck." She said. "Fortunately, no one watched his show, so they didn't make the connection when Maury and I started dating and eventually married."

She said she felt like the co-anchorship at CBS was a dream come true. "Maury's show didn't have good ratings, ever. He made less than most local television weathermen. I remember Maury and I dancing around, ecstatic that we could finally move out of the attic in his producer's garage."

But Chung says working with Rather was a nightmare from the beginning. "He kept calling me Kimono Chung. He suggested once that we should do a newscast to honor my people at Pearl Harbor. How infuriating. I screamed at him, 'I'm Chinese, you idiot.' I wanted to scratch his eyes out...I still do."

Chung recalled the evening Rather came walking onto the set wearing a shirt, tie and no pants or shoes. "He said he had bad gas and the heat was chafing his legs. He was wearing these yellow sock suspenders...and those puny legs...he looked ridiculous."

Chung told Jennings that Rather wants to be remembered in the same league as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. "He sees himself as almost being a legendary journalist. That's why he wanted to go to Kosovo after Geraldo Rivera staged that show of his...you know the one, where he laid down by a bush, the sound guys playing explosion sound effects, tossing dirt on top of him." 

"Yes...yes I remember." Jennings said with a sickly smile. It was obvious by his slouching posture that he didn't approve of the radically left leaning tabloid talk show host's exploits.

"NBC was smart to cut the scene where he grabs the gun from a crew member, who was dressed up like a soldier, and disappears around the bush into a hail of gun fire...how embarrassing that would be been for them..."

Rather was jealous and wanted in on the action, Chung said. "I still have friends at CBS, and they tell me that Dan wanted to do a live report out in the back of the studio, claiming he was in Kosovo, and during his newscast, a crew member lobs a phony grenade into camera's view behind him. Somebody screams, he turns and dives on it...in the excitement, the camera is dropped just long enough for Rather to be replaced by a mannequin full of catsup, which naturally explodes. He actually went to network executives with this...he thought interrupting the night's programming with updates on his condition, replaying the footage of him being all bandaged up, being carried away on a stretcher, would be a ratings grabber. He'd show up for work the next day, wearing a blood stained bandage around his head, squinting in agony, sending the message to viewers that the news matters more than one man's recovery from battle injuries..."

"How did he...did he really think he'd get away with it?"

"He thinks people are stupid. That they're conditioned from sitting in front of the television like mind-numbed robots for hours and hours."

"He does have a point there." Jennings opined, showing a rare instance of agreeing with Rather. "That's why we have to slant the news, so the dimwits out there can understand the implications of the news..."

"Oh I know." Chung said. "And I'll give him this, nobody can slant a story as well as Dan Rather."

"But those corny rhymes with his lead..." Jennings flinched in agony. "I almost feel embarrassed for him...until I remember that he's the competition." Jennings said, his toothy smile almost frightening.

This sort of belittling goes on for a full hour. What Jennings doesn't know is that CBS and Dan Rather are planning their own documentary about the life and times of Peter Jennings. According to one source, Jennings was a strange boy in junior high and was kicked out of biology for breaking into a satanic chant while dissecting a frog. They say there are other stories that are just as alarming. The source refused to divulge when the documentary would be completed and whether or not it would air as part of the salute to television journalists or not.

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