Daniel Shore died Friday, as most of you must know. I won't bore anyone with the details of his heroic (I don't use this term lightly) life, except to say that the release of leaked military documents this week, showing that the government is lying to us about everything in Afghanistan, harmonically converges with the passing of one of the bravest, truest journalists of the last half-century. Shore had the distinction of being on Richard Nixon's enemies list, finding that out by reading his own name on air while reading a leaked copy of said list. He went on to report on a leaked Pike Committee report detailing illegal CIA and FBI activities. When called before Congress to testify, Shore refused to name his source and was summarily fired by CBS. He didn't curl up and go away at that point; he kept going, to CNN and then to, as a commentator, NPR, where I knew him as the voice of aged reason, the best example of the wisdom of unfazed, old intellect.
That Wikileaks has published the latest litany of lies from the govment is proof, as if we needed any, that the Shores of our world are the true heroes and that they are not all dead--thank God. Thank you Mr. Shore for making me think while I listened to your broadcasts. Thank you for making me feel less alone and less of a malcontent. Thank you for what you did for our country, world. Your death reminded me of a passage from Shakespeare's Richard the Second Act II, i:
O', but they say the tounges of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony
Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.
He that no more must say is listen'd more
Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose;
More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before:
The setting sun, and music at the close,
As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last,
Writ in remembrance more than things long past. . .
Goodnight Mr. Shore.
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