Dan's Texas-storytelling tips

Editor's note: Michael Ackley's columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.

There has been some sputtering over the idea that the disgraced Dan Rather might teach journalism at Harvard.

His insistence that the George Bush/National Guard documents told a true story is cited as evidence that he is ethically or intellectually unfit to mold young minds. It is noted that the documents scandal was not his first fall from grace, and critics cite his lengthy record of bias against all things Republican.

But I say, let him teach.

For one thing, it would be good for Harvard's children of privilege to hear from a graduate of Sam Houston State University. The kids ticketed to take bylines like Branford Fauntleroy and Mather Dickinson to the New York Times could profit from old-fashioned Texas storytelling.

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Rather is 75 years old, has been in the news business since his college days and without doubt has a store of instructive anecdotes – the kind regarded as non-academic by the Ph.D.s – that would be more valuable to young minds than all the theory texts on the shelf.

More importantly, Rather is uniquely qualified to lecture students on the professional costs of a fall from journalistic grace. I would bet he could be counted on to lecture on the importance of objectivity and the dedication to fact that good reporting requires. He certainly was educated in an era when such virtues were taught in American colleges, and deep down he likely still believes in them. He probably even believes he practiced them.

The fact that from time to time, in the ego-inflating world of TV network reporting, he lapsed from those virtues doesn't mean he has forgotten them. Besides, no institution is more conducive to ''do-as-i-say-not-as-I-have-done'' rhetoric than the American university.

Furthermore, a man who has stayed married to the same woman for nearly 50 years can't be all bad. Rather has accomplished this feat, despite the temptations of a big-media life style.

It may be too much to expect that the justifiable drubbing he has received from critics – or the freeze-out he got at CBS – has brought his ego down to reasonable size. Nevertheless, if he were to confine his lectures to journalism-as-it-should-be, I'd bet he would do a fine job.

Give him a classroom. There he may find redemption.

If you really needed another reason to oppose President Bush's immigration ''reform plan,'' you got it last week when Bill Clinton praised its amnesty provisions for illegals.

''I'm proud of [Bush] for doing it and I thanked him for doing it,'' Clinton told the National Council of La Raza.

Then he ripped Republicans as believing ''in a government that is secret, unaccountable and that maximizes its own power. They really believe the world works better if they run it and we keep our mouths shut."

Back at ya, Bill. Remember Hillary's secret drafting of health care ''reform'' or government by executive order? Arrogance knows no party.

Kofi must go: In my school days I knew a big, strong kid of generally pacific temperament, who was regularly harassed by a smaller lad who would poke at him and run away. One day, when the latter youth turned to run, he found his way blocked by a group of students who just happened to be passing. Thus, he was the recipient of a punch that left his ribs black and blue. Those of us who witnessed the incident found is both just and amusing.

There seems to be a parallel in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, although it certainly is not amusing. The United Nations' Kofi Annan wants Israel to halt what he terms a disproportionate use of force in response to Palestinian paramilitary attacks from the Gaza Strip.

The secretary general is concerned about civilian casualties and he worries about the disruption of Palestinian government and infrastructure. However, he does not indicate what a proportionate response should be when Hamas launches rockets randomly into Israeli population centers.

Perhaps he thinks the random rocketing of Palestinian towns – as opposed to attempts to take out Hamas leaders ''surgically'' – would be preferable. More likely, he thinks the Israelis should not respond at all.

The problem does not lie in Annan's calls for a peaceable resolution of differences. It lies in the disproportionate favoritism he shows the terrorists of Hamas.

Unless he starts issuing daily calls for the Palestinians to recognize formally Israel's right to exist and to arrest the terrorists in their midst, the proportionate response in Annan's case would be to fire him.

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