Dan Rather
"I can be dumb as wallpaper about some things," admits simile-loving TV news anchorman Dan Rather, "but I'm smart enough to know how lucky I am to have this job." Rather, 69, is also smart enough to parlay his American Dream TV news segment into a book of the same name (Morrow, $25) about folks in hot pursuit of happiness. The story, says Rather, "always starts with freedom—the red-throbbing heart of the American Dream." But he refuses to "define the dream as just rags to riches." So there is the riches-to-rags tale of Mark Green, who traded a high-paying, high-stress job in a Southern California office equipment firm for an $18,000-a-year position at a tiny computer company in Oregon. Now he goes home for lunch and is back with his wife and kids by 5 p.m. "Nurturing the family," says Rather, "is a big part of the dream." As for Rather's own story, after 20 years at the anchor desk, the final chapter is yet to be written: "The old cowboys used to say they love herding cows so much that they just have 'a crying for daylight'—couldn't wait for it to be daylight. That's the way I feel about this job."
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