The depth of Walter Cronkite's madness

If you've been reading it lately, you'll notice that Instapundit has been a group blog lately, staffed by Ann Althouse, Michael J. Totten, and Megan McArdle of Jane Galt. Glenn Reynolds has been of somewhere, and returned recently.

Althouse is still posting interesting things like this, from a Larry King interview of Walter Cronkite, in which these things are said:

KING: Now, bin Laden, of course, could help Bush in that it reminds people of a terror issue in which he runs strong. It also could hurt Bush in that reminds people he's still alive. So this could be a double edged sword, right?

CRONKITE: Indeed. Indeed. And the thing that in bringing this threat to us, there is almost, in the fact that he dressed well, that he looked well, he was clean shaven, nearly clean shaven as those folks get. It seemed almost, to me, that he wanted to enter into negotiations, that he was really up -- he wants to move into a leadership role in international affairs instead of the role of a brigand. And he spoke calmly about this thing. The threat was there, no question about it. He's delivering a warning to us, no question about that. And certainly, I don't think there's any reason to feel that we can take him to our bosom just because this speech at all. He's perfectly capable of blowing us up.

I knew Cronkite had lost what mind he had after reading this column, in which he says:

I believe that most of us reporters are liberal, but not because we consciously have chosen that particular color in the political spectrum. More likely it is because most of us served our journalistic apprenticeships as reporters covering the seamier side of our cities - the crimes, the tenement fires, the homeless and the hungry, the underclothed and undereducated.

We reached our intellectual adulthood with daily close-ups of the inequality in a nation that was founded on the commitment to equality for all. So we are inclined to side with the powerless rather than the powerful. If that is what makes us liberals so be it, just as long as in reporting the news we adhere to the first ideals of good journalism - that news reports must be fair, accurate and unbiased. That clearly doesn't apply when one deserts the front page for the editorial page and the columns to which opinion should be isolated.

Cronkite knows very well reporters and news people in general tend to be liberal because liberals tend to want to be in newsrooms. And he knows just as well that the people who really get a taste of the low life, police and firefighters, tend much more to the conservative side. So it's a silly argument. Silly, but not cRAZy like "Osama shaved and wore a nice outfit, give him a break!" Isn't someone in charge of Walter's medication?

UPDATE: "Nearly clean shaven as those folks get"? Not sure what tape you were watching, Walter, but how nutty and/or backwoodsy racist are you exactly?

UPDATE 2: How did I miss this? More Cronkite: "So now the question is basically right now, how will this affect the election? And I have a feeling that it could tilt the election a bit. In fact, I'm a little inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing."

Jesus.