I have been mad at Walter Cronkite for years. Here's why: On December 10, 2003, John Glenn went back into space on the Space Shuttle Discovery. Cronkite, forever associated with the moon landing, provided commentary for the network providing the coverage I was watching. He waxed nostalgically about the Mercury program and Glenn and how the film The Right Stuff did a great disservice to the program by comparing the astronauts to monkeys.It angered me that he said that about The Right Stuff, a film I've admired since I first viewed it many years ago. In my eyes, Cronkite came off looking like a senile old man who couldn't understand how much the film admired the astronauts, and couldn't understand the subtle social satire of a media and culture that didn't just admire the astronauts but attributed to them god-like celebrity. It bothered me that the "most trusted man in America" couldn't understand what I understood at a very early age.
