Moses, Johnny Carson, and Dan Rather: Character Studies in Contrasts

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor
June 23, 2006

Tomorrow morning's Torah portion of Shelach Lecha is one of the most dramatic portions in the Bible. It's begins with great hopes and expectations and plunges to unimaginable depths. Having arrived in the wilderness of Paran, a hop, skip and a jump from Eretz Yisrael, Moses sends out twelve princes of the tribes to reconnoiter the land. He expected them to come back quickly and with a positive report. The reverse! It takes them forty days! And when they return, ten of them, while praising the land, say that they will never make it! This sets off The Great Rebellion. As a result, the adult generation is sentenced to die in the wilderness and never reach the Promised Land, except for Caleb and Joshua. They were the only two who remained faithful and tried to rally the people, who, if unchecked, were ready to reverse course and return to Egypt. This is the scene in its essence. Only God's appearance halts the catastrophe. 

There are several protagonists to this scene: 

The ten spies who say they can't make it. 
The two spies who say they can. 
God. 
The Israelites. 
Aaron, who has little input. 
And Moses. 

The Torah does not provide detailed psychological insights and information. In its brevity - just imagine how heavy the scroll would be if it did! - it gives only the slightest of sketches and leaves the rest to us. So I wonder: 

Why didn't Moses get up and scream at them! 
Why did he abdicate center-stage to the younger men, one who will be his successor? 
Why did this man who met God face to face, the faithful prophet - choke? 
How was he feeling at this critical moment, crossroads and crisis? 
His mission was to bring them home. 
He stood up to Pharaoh in the palace. 
He stood up to Pharaoh's army at Yam Suf. 
How was he feeling when confronting his own rebellious people? 
We will never know. 

One last question: Why didn't he quit? Pack it in, retire, then and there? Why didn't he? 

The more I read Torah, the more times I repeat the same parasha, the more questions I have, and the fewer answers. The Torah leaves us with a fact: Moses will struggle on with the Israelites for the next forty years. He will give them his life, his sweat, blood and privately, his tears. Except for one moment, he will never publicly show his disappointment or dismay. Moses, from this sedra, is a paradigm, a model, of leadership, of commitment, of unswerving devotion to a higher cause, and offers his life on its altar. Only in the Midrashical Rabbinical imagination, does Moses argue with God, on the eve of their entrance into Eretz Yisrael, to let him continue in his mission. And God says, "No." "Here and now is the end." 

These thoughts on Shelach Lecha were instigated by events this week at CBS. I grew up looking at the "all Seeing Eye" of its logo, and the voice of Walter Cronkite was nearly the voice of God. If he said it, it was true! He not only narrated the news, but he also narrated the show, "You Were There" whose sponsor was the Prudential Life Insurance Company. Their logo was the Rock of Gibraltar. His face and assured voice reinforced by "The Rock" indicated that whatever he said was true!  And then he retired to be replaced by Dan Rather. Most of us are of a vintage to remember him as the young reporter in Viet Nam, while Walter Cronkite sat the main news desk. He exits CBS as Katie Couric enters the front door. I am struck by the somewhat symmetry of subject between the sedra and the current scene. Douglas Durden's headline caught my eye: "There's a whiff of tragedy around exit of Rather." We could echo the late Lloyd Benson's comment of Dan Quail in the debate - "You're no John Kennedy" - and say about Rather - "He was no Walter Cronkite."  Yet he served approximately forty years, at times risked life and limb for CBS to report the news, and made only one serious mistake, just like Moses, namely, the story of President Bush and the National Guard. The feature articles by Howard Kurtz and of the Washington Post besides Durden's indicate that perhaps Rather should have exited more gracefully earlier, not going from news anchor to 60 Minutes. Thus a stellar career - from Yugoslavia to Iraq, conventions and hurricanes, interviews with Bill Clinton and Saddam Hussein, ends in such an ignoble way. The article indicates that lately he has seen the movie "Good Night and Good Luck" five times, sometimes by himself. While no wise indicating any comparability of Moses and Dan Rather, God forbid, this does provide us with striking contrasts in parallel conditions and two different paradigms. 

I want to present a third paradigm.

I virtually never go to sleep before the eleven thirty time slot because I grew up to the voice of Ed McMahon announcing "Heeere's Johnny."  Johnny Carson hosted the Tonight Show for thirty years. (If he did it for forty the parallelism would be a tad better.) Through good and bad I didn't miss too many shows. In May 1992 he retired. In the New York Times of May 23rd, 1992 Bernard Weinraub wrote an article entitled "Johnny Carson Fades Out, His Dignity and Privacy Intact." Not that his departure did not have its attendant difficulties. It certainly did. But he sites several quotations that offer us another paradigm for this juncture in life that we will all face some day in our individual ways. I have saved this article for fourteen years, just to use tonight. 

"Perched on a stool before an audience of network executives and the families of the show's staff and crew he said: "I'd like to do the whole thing all over again. It's been a great experience in my life." At the show's finale, Mr. Carson spoke quietly. "And so it has come down to this," he said. "You people watching - it has been an honor and a privilege coming into your homes and entertaining you." And then, moment later, his voice broke as he said; "I bid you a very heartfelt goodnight." Talking in the parking lotto an NBC news crew he said: "Everything comes to an end; nothing lasts forever. Thirty years is enough. It's time to get out while you're still working on top of your game, while you're still working well." 

As we all know, Johnny Carson never returned to the Tonight Show, remaining out of the limelight until his death. His choice to end his career when, where and how offers another contrasting paradigm to that of Dan Rather and to Moses. 

One of my favorite shows was JAG. On one of the episodes Ernest Borgnine was a guest. In one of those throwaway lines he enunciated a pearl: "Old heroes never die. They just become the stuff of legends." These are three legends, each different, each illuminating. Each presenting us with paradigms for life.

Shabbat Shalom.