Saturday, June 9, 2018

The last of the serious journalists with integrity?

Fox News Star Charles Krauthammer Reveals He Has Weeks to Live in 
Heartbreaking Letter

by Greg Wilson | Fox News

11:5
Syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer says his cancer has returned; reaction from Chris Wallace, anchor of 'Fox News Sunday,' and Juan Williams, Fox News analyst.


Charles Krauthammer, the beloved and brilliant Fox News Channel personality who gave up a pioneering career in psychiatry to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning political analyst, on Friday revealed the heartbreaking news that he is in the final stages of a losing battle with cancer.

The 68-year-old’s incisive takes on politics of the day have been missing from Fox News Channel’s “Special Report” for nearly a year as he battled an abdominal tumor and subsequent complications, but colleagues and viewers alike had held out hope that he would return to the evening show he helped establish as must-viewing. But in an eloquent, yet unblinking letter to co-workers, friends and Fox News Channel viewers, Krauthammer disclosed that he has just weeks to live.

“I have been uncharacteristically silent these past ten months,” the letter began. “I had thought that silence would soon be coming to an end, but I’m afraid I must tell you now that fate has decided on a different course for me.”


"This is the final verdict. 
My fight is over.”
  • ~ Charles Krauthammer

Krauthammer, who graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1975 despite a first-year diving accident that left him a quadriplegic, explained that he had a malignant tumor removed from his abdomen last August. Although a series of setbacks left him in  the hospital in the ensuing months, he believed until recently that he was on the road to recovery.

Young Charles Krauthammer before his tragic diving accident


“However, recent tests have revealed that the cancer has returned,” Krauthammer wrote. “There was no sign of it as recently as a month ago, which means it is aggressive and spreading rapidly. My doctors tell me their best estimate is that I have only a few weeks left to live. This is the final verdict. My fight is over.”

What we never saw on television only makes his life more heroic

Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of Fox News and its parent company, 21st Century Fox, said Krauthammer has been a giant of journalism and a key part of the channel's success.

"Charles has been a profound source of personal and intellectual inspiration for all of us at Fox News," Murdoch said. "His always principled stand on the most important issues of our time has been a guiding star in an often turbulent world, a world that has too many superficial thinkers vulnerable to the ebb and flow of fashion, and a world that, unfortunately, has only one Charles Krauthammer.

"His words, his ideas, his dignity and his integrity will resonate within our society and within me for many, many years to come," Murdoch added.

Fox News viewers will undoubtedly miss Krauthammer’s formidable intellect and ability to analyze politics and politicians with a cerebral wit and keen charm. As the dean of “The Fox News All Stars,” the panel of pundits who break down headlines and events nightly on Fox News Channel’s top-rated “Special Report,” Krauthammer could be counted on to make viewers think, question and even chuckle.


Krauthammer was on his way to greatness in the medical field when he veered first into policy, and then into journalism. After medical school, he became chief psychiatry resident at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he studied depression and published ground-breaking findings in top medical journals. But in 1978, he took a job in the Carter administration directing planning in psychiatric research and later served as a speech writer for Vice President Walter Mondale.

It was in the nation’s capital that Krauthammer trained his mind and talents on political analysis and began penning columns for The New Republic, Time magazine and finally the Washington Post. In 1985, he won journalism’s top prize for his weekly political commentary. In his sobering farewell, Krauthammer said he is “grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation’s destiny.”

“I leave this life with no regrets,” Krauthammer wrote. “It was a wonderful life – full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make life worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.”

A brilliant, fair-minded, honest man who will be sorely missed


The heart asks pleasure first ––
And the excuse from pain ––
And then those little anodynes
That deaden suffering.

And then to go to sleep ––
And then –– if it should be
The Will of its Inquisitor ––
The liberty to die.

~ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

14 comments:

  1. Unless one has dealt with the consequences of life in a wheelchair, one cannot appreciate with what great effort and exertion Dr. Krauthammer led his life.

    I didn't always agree with him -- but I always APPRECIATED him.

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. Killie-Lou Byrd said

    Krauthammer Is Dying With Dignity
    While Liberals Are Living With None


    Townhall, by Derek Hunter

    Some people die with bravery, grace, and dignity while others live with none of those attributes. This truth was on full display Friday when Washington Post columnist and Fox News star Charles Krauthammer announced to the world what I’d heard in whispers for a couple of weeks – he was dying, he only has a few weeks left to live. The outpouring of love and admiration that followed was, no doubt, comforting for him and his family in this awful time. But, as has become all too common in the social media age, some liberals couldn’t let a day, or even an ...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Claude Codpiece Thwackeray said

      I loved the Elizabeth Warren turquoise jab. Excellent!

      Delete
    2. Ramblin' Wrecktumm said


      Reply 2 - Posted by: Rinktum, 6/10/2018 7:02:39 AM (No. 11658909)
      Their behavior is par for the course and exactly what we expected. If progressives have done anything in the part two years it is to expose their vile, dark, evil, and shameless souls. The vicious and profane hatred that pours out of their hearts defines them. Don’t expect anything better, they are committed to the rancid path they are on. It’s all hate, all the time. You become their mortal enemy the moment they realize you do not agree with their views and are treated as such. Hate motivates them and will ultimately consume them.

      Delete
    3. Dylan Marshall said

      Dr. K. was and still is a heck of a lot higher than the rest of us. The guy endured a lot. Almost reminds me of Stephen Hawking. Who´s tougher than Dr. K.?

      Delete
    4. Clytemnestra O'Shaughnessy said

      The left´s obscene ridicule of Dr. K. is precisely why any dim should never hold public office ever again.

      Delete
    5. Allen Burnsand said

      The grace and dignity shown by Charles Krauthammer in his last days comes from decades of struggle just to live anything close to a normal life. A life he lived with determination, perseverance and brilliance.

      On a personal note, Dr. Krauthammer is the reason I was finally able to shame my malignant narcissist of a father into silence. We were watching him on Fox and my father started to deride the way he looked and his odd posture. I said, “You do realize that he’s a quadriplegic, don’t you?” The man who thought he knew it all was speechless.

      Delete
    6. Francois Frederic Diaghilev said

      Hatred is the poison one drinks, hoping the other person dies.

      It´s taking time, but the progressives and liberals like Nancy Pelosi are slowly doing themselves in with every sound bite and written word.

      Delete
    7. Johann Gottfried Wesendonck said

      McCain, take notice. This is how an honorable man does it.

      Delete
  4. Always sad to lose another sane person especially when the evil ones never seem to die off.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It has often been said, "Only the Good die young, Kid.

      It looks like that may be true.

      Of course what appears to be evil MAY only be STUPIDITY. Remember at least half the population have IQ's below 100.

      Studpidity is not a sin, but it sure does a lot to gum up the wheels of progress –– and I'm NOT talking about the kind of "progress" advocated by "PROGRESSIVES" i.e. CulturaL Marxists and well-meaning morons better known as Useful Idiots.

      May Heaven forever protect us from THAT!

      Delete
  5. My one hope for Charles Krauthammer is that he will come to Jesus and accept him as the Messiah who came to save him from sin before he passes away. Krauthammer has been given wisdom, and hopefully, he'll see the light.

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    Replies
    1. It's highly unlikely that an atheistic Jewish intelletual would ever "come to Jesus," Mystere. Such folk are hard-wired to resist such thinking with all their might and main. Personally, I'd be happy if he'd just admit he was dead wrong abiut Mr. Trump before he shuffles off the coil.

      Delete

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