Roger Mudd was a stalwart of CBS News back during its “Tiffany Network” days and he’s an unabashedly old-fashioned kinda news guy:

Mr. Mudd remained in the forefront of CBS news through the events that shaped the last century: the March on Washington in 1963, the Kennedy presidency and assassination, the King and Robert Kennedy murders, the moon landing, Vietnam, Nixon’s resignation and the administrations of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. …

“We had no video, no Internet, no Blackberries,” he recalled. “But we also had no doubts about our values or our mission.” …

Mr. Mudd, a remarkably spry 80, minced no words: “Back then, we told the story from the beginning. There was no walking around and talking, no flapping of hands. There was just strong reporting … .

“Quality has dropped immeasurably,” he said.

True dat. Mudd also sees the evening news as something worth fighting to preserve.

  The Emmy Award-winning newsman was emphatic about the responsibility of broadcast journalism as he sees it.

“No matter what, the American people deserve a thoughtful and balanced account of what has happened in their world during the last 24 hours,” Mr. Mudd said. “I devoutly hope that the evening news will never disappear from our lives.”

Hmm. It would be good it the networks delivered real news, as the BBC World Service still does (when it is reporting rather than advocating for or militating against, that is).

It sounds to me that Mudd isn’t only lamenting the poor quality of the network news. He’s also mourning a collective social ritual that, once the evening news disappears, will never reappear in our lives—the collective experience of gathering around the electronic hearth at the same time every day that everybody else in America is doing it.

If I had my druthers, I’d work on getting families to eat dinner together every night. Then I’d worry about everybody in America sitting around and watching the “news” at the same time. But I know what he means:

Those were the days my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live the life we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.

(Those Were the Days) 

David Poland reports:

[The director Ang Lee has] become a more and more relaxed interview (as we found on his Lust, Caution LWD), the highlight so far being his discussion of The Ice Storm, which he says he should have called “The Fuck You Movie,” as the choice to do it was a direct response to having made “nice, heartwarming” films. He said, “A lady would come up to me and say, ‘I just loved Sense & Sensibility,’ and I’d just want to punch her in the face.”

This guy just managed to ruin not just that one movie but his entire oeuvre for me.

Dear Ang Lee: consider this the Fuck You post.

Obama supporters didn’t have an easy time of it on the tube this Sunday morning. From Chris Matthews to George Stephanopoulos (no links to transcripts available yet for those two) to Howard Kurtz, every host made it plain that the former messiah is now deep in the muck.

At Contentions, Jennifer Rubin also mentions more of the displeased—the NYT’s Bob Herbert and MoDo and, most tellingly, Howard Dean.

These bear the tell-tale signs of scorned lovers’ rants. Their once beloved candidate is now reviled, mocked and tossed overboard while they prepare for the possible return of their “ex” with all the unpleasantness that entails. And who is joining them?

Well, none other than Howard Dean, who until recently seemed to pursue strategies designed to either end the race early (Obama liked that) or to encourage delegates to respect the pledged delegate count (Obama really liked that). Yet Friday, for the first time, Dean uttered this: “I think the race is going to come down to the perception in the last six or eight races of who the best opponent for McCain will be. I do not think in the long run it will come down to the popular vote or anything else.”

The bottom line in all this backing-and-forthing among pundits about whether they’re for Obama or for Clinton [e.a.]?

[I]t may be that these people have something in common: none of them really wants to be on the wrong side when the Democratic race ends.

In other words: pundits are just like the politicians they cover—first of all, they’re political animals and they operate in their own self-interest.

But you knew that … right?