Well of course you all know I’m not the biggest fan of CBS. Not a fan at all. I’m not a big fan of 60 Minutes either, but just the same they always have something that makes the entire nation take notice. When Ed Bradley took over a lead man for 60 Minutes, I figured that was pretty good for him considering his time on the broadcast, but I’m not going to lie to you because you know I didn’t agree with him much on politics and I can’t say I agreed with the slant of some of his reporting. But Ed knew how to sniff out bull and expose it to the light of day. I enjoyed and blogged about when he exposed eco-terrorist, he debunked The Da Vinci Code and he identified the bull in the Duke lacrosse rape case. Just looking back over my posts about 60 Minutes, I found that although I really don’t like 60 Minutes, most of the posts where I say something good about the show were because of his reports. So although I didn’t like much of his slant or the show, I did obviously notice that he was doing better than some of his colleagues. You could say I preferred him out of a bunch I usually disagree with, because he was the one who spun the least.

So I am saddened to hear that he died today.

Notice while he was growing up in a rough part of town in the pre-desegregation days, when northern cities like Philadelphia ran a less formal form of racial segregation than some areas of the south, his parents told him “You can be anything you want, kid”. And he became a heck of a lot more than many kids might ever be.

Again proving the road to success is not going through crying about your skin tone, but getting up off your butt, having a goal and achieving it! If Ed could do so much when starting with so little, how much more can any child coming from any rough part of America do today? I say much more if their parents are willing to believe in them and help them focus on doing well in life, embracing education, faith and not allowing them to feel society is against them.

Ed Bradley you set an example for children, to show them that they can achieve if they put their minds to it and you will be missed.

With Ed gone, will this be the last nice thing I ever say that includes the letters “CBS”? I don’t know, but if more of them do some honest work like Ed it won’t be.