Looking Back

"And that’s the way it is..."

...followed by today’s date in the voice of “CBS Evening News” anchorman, Walter Cronkite. I mean, was this the voice of God or what? For many American TV viewers in the mid-twentieth century, this wasn't far from the truth. Unfortunately.

That's right. If you were one of the millions of Americans in the 1950s through the 1970s who wanted his or her evening meal of current events pre-chewed and even digested for you, Walter Cronkite was your man.

Anyone with a half a mind back then, and certainly anyone with an inquiring mind or a questioning spirit, watched the “Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC instead.

Cronkite, like Dan Rather who followed in his footsteps, not only reported the daily world news to most of us, he actually chose for us and even edited in or edited out what we’d see and hear out of the day’s voluminous collection of worldwide happenings. So, if you were like most of us middle-class American viewers, what you got at 6:30 pm EST on CBS was not actually “the evening news” but “The World According to Walt”.

More than once I found myself talking back to Walter Cronkite as he signed off every night with “And that’s the way it is...”. My rejoinder went something like this: “Sez you, Walt. Sez you.”

(Author's Note: Walter Cronkite was still alive at the time of this blog posting. The veteran broadcast journalist, an American television icon for decades, passed away July 17, 2009 at the age of 92. Whether you liked him or not, he will certainly be missed by millions.)