“Courage”
Dan Rather was given the unenviable task of following in the footsteps of the legendary Walter Cronkite as anchor of the CBS Evening News. Cronkite famously ended every newscast with a tagline recognized by millions and Rather tried various times to come up with one of his own. One of the most infamous was the simple one word sign-off, “Courage,” which becomes ironic in light of the assault upon him which may or may not have been instigated by the routinely mocked sign-off.
Facetious Irony
The author is quite concerned with the effects of unexplained mysteries upon the public consciousness. His concern is situated within the possibility for such mystery and ambiguity to serve as the creative material for conspiracy theories. Such is the attachment of significant he applies to the Rather incident that he become ironically facetious:
“Our generation must have an answer to our riddle. And we will all know we have it when Dan Rather comes on television on no longer looks anxious.”
The Attack
The attackers famously addressed Rather by asking, “Kenneth, what is the frequency.” As the author points out, this supplies the attack itself with a boatload of irony: they knew their victim well enough to speak to him in secret code yet somehow failed to recognize the man they were actually confronting was one of the most famous men in the country with one of the most recognizable faces in the country?
The Taunt
In exploring the unlikely nature possibility that the irony mentioned directly above actually took place as part of the act, the author remains unconvinced. He is certain that the men who attacked Rather knew exactly who they were attacking and that the famous element of incident—the one which instills in it the most mystery—is actually the one part of the attack easiest explain. The suggestion is here that “Kenneth, what is the frequency” was ironically planned to make the event memorable since merely attacking Rather on the basis of recognizing him would not have enjoyed the same media impact.
Donald Barthelme
At the center of the essay is an ironic coincidence upon which the author builds his own version of the taunt. Ironically, then, the essay itself becomes a verbal example of the physical confrontation inspiring it in the first place. He takes what it admittedly an unlikely coincidence of the phrase “What is the frequency” appearing in proximity to the name Kenneth in a story by Barthelme and invests it with hyperbolically inflated statistical improbability. After all, the name Kenneth is hardly unique and “what is the frequency” isn’t an exactly an unknown commodity, either. And then, of course, there is also the fact that the question in Barthelme's story isn't being addressed to Kenneth at all.
