Cronkite and Coughlin

If you are 40-years old or younger - Walter Cronkite (if you recognize the name at all) was never much to you except some old guy who used to read the news or something like that. If you are over 40-years old then Cronkite is remembered as the most trusted person in journalism. Point being - Cronkite long ago became irrelevant and the number of people to whom his name means anything is dwindling.

When I read the latest rantings of Cronkite today - the first person I thought of was Father Charles Coughlin. I imagine most of you just said, "Father who?"

Father Coughlin was one of the first people to use the medium of radio for evangelical preaching. He became very, very famous doing that and also very very influential. At his peak Coughlin had about 30 million listeners a week at a time when the US population was just about 123 million. Almost one out of four Americans tuned into hear him speak and the things Father Coughlin chose to speak about became very political and partisan. Today, if anyone remembers him at all, it is as a anti-Semite barking moonbat.

I'm not saying Cronkite is an anti-Semite like Coughlin but I am saying that like Coughlin - he's just a guy who was very popular at one time but whose radical viewpoints will relegate him to the memory hole of history. I can't ever recall caring about what Cronkite's viewpoint was on any subject and now my feeling about Cronkite is the mass majority one.