Dan Rather and O.J. Simpson: Media pundits

A tale of two people whose observations aren’t incorrect, but who serve as particularly imperfect vessels for disseminating such insights:

Dan Rather threw his successor, Katie Couric, under the bus, telling MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, “The mistake was to try to bring the ‘Today’ ethos to the evening news and to dumb it down, tart it up in hopes of attracting a younger audience. … going to celebrity coverage rather than war coverage.”

Rather’s ignominious fall from CBS makes him an unlikely critic of his former network, but finds agreement from an even unlikelier source: O.J. Simpson.

In an interview with Editor & Publisher, the sage media critic slagged the nation’s press for being more interested in celebrities than explorations of outer space.

“‘When Paris Hilton was going to jail last week, more people knew about that than knew that we were sending people into space that day,’ Simpson said in a phone interview from Miami. ‘It has replaced what is real news. There was always a place for it, but it was [gossip writer] Rona Barrett. Now it is the equivalent of Edward R. Murrow reporting it today.
…’

“Simpson cited the recent story about him being asked to leave a Louisville, Ky. restaurant during Kentucky Derby week. He said the owner asked him to exit and he agreed, but was surprised it became a story anyway. ‘A guy pulls me aside at a restaurant, he is not a fan and he won't serve me,’ Simpson recalled. ‘I could make a big deal about it because it was illegal. But I said it was no problem, but it became a newspaper story.



“‘In this day and age, when someone not serving me in Kentucky, with no argument, is a story and we don't know that someone is going up in space and we know more about Paris Hilton going to jail, something is wrong,’ he added.”

O.J. – whose command of the day’s events is vaguely impressive (certainly, there’s nothing else of significance going on right about now other than a moon shot) – may be right about our misplaced obsessions, but he pretty much inspired the trend with his slow-speed chase following that little double-murder he was no doubt investigating at the Kentucky Derby. News outlets, realizing the insatiable appetite for such junky news, try to outdo one another by pouring it on when it comes to pointless coverage.

But at least each Mediathon (to borrow Frank Rich’s term) ends up giving us a glimpse into our nation’s psyche. O.J.’s saga burrowed into issues of race and celebrity justice. Anna Nicole Smith’s death-by-overdose offered sex, drugs, a culture of celebrity enablers and wealthy, withered octogenarians who pull better than the rest of us do. And the Paris Hilton ordeal, following Lindsay Lohan’s most recent meltdown(s), represents society at least trying, albeit in the most hapless manner imaginable, to push back against privileged black holes of self-entitlement whose sole contribution to Western Civilization is being able to walk in stiletto heels without falling over.

So maybe Simpson and Hilton ought to enter politics, so we can get our news and infotainment simultaneously. Heaven knows they own the world already as it is.

* UPDATE: After CBS COO Les Moonves called Rather’s assessment of Couric’s work as “tarting … up” the evening news “sexist,” Rather scurried over to the Fox News Channel to defend himself, accusing Moonves of “trying to … change the subject.”

“RATHER: … (H)e doesn't know about news. He said, at one point, we needed to have naked news. He said at one point that...

“DAVID ASMAN: Well, he was joking, no?

“RATHER: Well, was he? You tell me. But he said it.”

I’ll tell you, Dan: He was joking.