60 Minutes after Five-Forty

Over the past few weeks, I’ve made a point of watching the local CBS TV affiliate’s broadcast of the “CBS Evening News,” enthusiastically looking for the day’s highlights/lowlights from the reporter-in-chief-co-conspirator, Mr. Dan Rather.

As a rule, I haven’t spent much time watching the “network news” over the past 20 years, except by accident or as a polite deference when forced to watch in someone else’s living room. With the onset of “Rathergate,” however, I find myself drawn like a moth to the CBS TV screen each evening. Am I the only one that has noticed that, instead of the lead story, I find that I have to watch through at least one commercial break-- until about "60 minutes after five-forty PM (six-forty PM)” to get to the meat of the desired story?

Like the morbid instinct that makes you want to turn your head to look as you slow your car and pass the scene of an auto accident, I somehow can’t help but watch Mr. Rather—hoping to see some indication of true humanity and remorse in his stoic face as he is forced to read from his own network's news copy the words "scandal," "CBS," and “60 Minutes II.”

Come on, Danno, go ahead and break down. Give us all a sob or a girlish whimper, or pound your wrinkled fist on your desk and storm off the set--into the sunset of disgrace and obscurity.

Oh well, I guess not…