Читать книгу The Secret History of Entertainment - David Hepworth, David Hepworth - Страница 10

One evening in 1986, Dan Rather, one of the best-known figures in American network news, was assaulted while walking down Manhattan’s Park Avenue by two well-dressed men he had never seen before. One man punched Rather and kicked him in the back while loudly demanding, ‘Kenneth, what’s the frequency?’ The victim took refuge in a nearby office building and the men ran off. Rather’s account of this puzzling incident was widely disbelieved, given his flair for self-dramatisation (he once took to signing off bulletins with the word ‘courage’), and his alleged assailant’s question was adopted in some quarters as slang to denote cluelessness. In 1997 it was concluded that the man who had set upon him was a disturbed individual named William Tager, by then serving a prison sentence for the murder of an NBC stagehand. At the time, this unfortunate individual was under the impression that the media were beaming messages to him and presumably thought such a prominent member of the media as Rather would know the actual frequency. The incident – or possibly Game Theory’s 1987 song ‘Kenneth, What’s The Frequency?’ – inspired REM’s song of almost the same name on their 1994 album Monster. Dan Rather, who is as averse to personal publicity as most news anchors, subsequently appeared with the group on backing vocals when they undertook a Saturday Night Live appearance.