MediaWatch: July 1990
Table of Contents:
More Mandela Mania
More Mandela Mania. Dan Rather drooled over Nelson Mandela on the Arsenio Hall Show June 27: "The power of Nelson Mandela is the power of the idea and the ideal. Nelson Mandela knows what he believes. He knows what he's willing to die for, and that carries a tremendous power and it radiates from him as it did from Martin Luther King, as it does from Mother Teresa, as it did from Golda Meir. There's tremendous power in that, and when we say accurately I think, that Nelson Mandela is a worldwide hero -- people of all races and nationalities look up to him -- I think that why."
Rather was so passionate about Mandela, he even contradicted Amnesty International's refusal to consider him a political prisoner because of his violent activities: "A lot of people tried to get the world to believe that this man was a radical, terrorist, killed, psychological killer -- all bullbleep, because they feared him. Because he knew what he believed in and what he was prepared to die for."
