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When
Katie Couric begins anchoring the CBS evening News on September
5th, I'll be among the millions of viewers who are watching something
else.
I don't care that Couric will be the first to simulcast the evening
news on television and stream live online. That means nothing to
me except now CBS is giving us a choice whether to become depressed
and fearful watching Couric on television, or on the internet. Thanks
guys.
I don't even care that this is gender profiling. So what? And Couric
will also become an anchor of CBS News primetime specials and a
correspondent on 60 Minutes. The good thing about that last assignment
is that maybe she'll replace that other woman correspondent who
looks like she has a blonde hamster on top of her head.
There are those who don't mind getting their TV news from a woman,
but I am not among them. I find a woman's facial expression, as
she delivers the news, to be a form of editorializing. They also
have that "Oooohhhh, how dreadful" manner of reading the news off
their Teleprompters in reedy little voices, with accompanying raised
brows, squints, and rolled eyes. I can get that same effect by visiting
my mother.
Where's the objectivity in today's female newscasters? I'd prefer
forming my own opinion like a real person, and not a zombie or worse,
a "unit," as the government calls us. How about giving the facts
without the simpering, whimpering semi-histrionics? How about getting
a manly man like Walter Cronkite, or are the days gone when news
was delivered by people we believed. Men.
This may sound biased to you, since I'm a woman and I'm speaking
against women of the news, but don't come to me with that "sisterhood"
stuff. These people are not related to me. They are not my kin.
They are not even my kith.
Never mind. I don't limit myself to disliking Katie Couric. When
Connie Chung did her version of the news, she was probably more
everything-I-don't-like than Couric could ever be. If you want to
see what happened to Chung, check out the following video, and tell
me you want to hear the news from her: www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLY3dz97jyM
Furthermore, it's irritating when they say, "Back to you, Sylvia."
Sylvia is not her real name. What'm I crazy to leave myself open
for a lawsuit? I just call her Sylvia. Anyway, there's Sylvia, mic
in hand, with Baghdad blowing up in the background, trying to sound
brave and fearless. Like a man. If you ask me, she's probably somewhere
in Hollywood with film of Baghdad blowing up taken from some old
movie and projected onto a screen behind her back. That's what I
think of women on the news. Besides, I saw "Wag the Dog," and can
tell you that there's a movie that rings of truth.
Better yet, rent Buck Henry's 1995 "To Die For," with Nicole Kidman
as the very ambitious Suzanne Stone, an aspiring TV personality
who'll do anything to get on local TV weather.
And what about
men on TV news these days? They're coupled with women. Are they
scared of the women or what? They seem to become mentally enfeebled
while sitting next to an aggressive women of the news, like they're
afraid if they don't let her make all her little editorializing
expressions, she'll report him for facial harassment. It may be
my imagination but it seems to me their voices are getting higher.
Bottom line -- I don't want the Couric Crowd guiding my opinion.
I know what's right and what's wrong and, frankly, I think Kiefer
Sutherland's Jack Bauer, the lead character on Fox's hit TV show,
"24," should get over to Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and get crucial
information from prisoners using his Bauer counter-terrorist methods.
It seems that our real-life military are no longer permitted to
use effective methods without screaming softies like Couric who'll
probably soon demand flat-screen TVs for every prisoner and chair
a committee to disallow racial profiling of prisoners even if they
have bombs strapped to their middle-eastern middles when captured.
Perhaps Jack Bauer could truly torment prisoners by forcing them
to watch Couric do the evening news.
Just to show you that I'm not as biased as you think against women
on the news, I don't like women doing the weather either. For one
thing, they seldom take the trouble to find out the correct pronunciation
of the place they're reporting on. It would be a rare treat to find
a woman on the weather channel who can pronounce "Adirondacks,""
Skuykill River," and "Poughkeepsie." One even mispronounced "Fargo."
She said it like "forego." How does one manage to do that?
Maybe we should have TV news delivered by a hard-hitting, squinty-eyed
male reporter, Camel cigarette pinched in his tobacco-stained fingers,
fedora perched atop his head, eyeglasses slipping halfway down his
nose, piles of paper on a messy desk, sleeves rolled up, ready to
give us the news, the real, corroborated news and not the kind we
get a lot of that's euphemistically referred to as "unconfirmed."
Perhaps I should be grateful to people like Couric and Chung. It
gives me an excuse to read a good book.
Copyright Maggie Van Ostrand
"A Balloon In Cactus"
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September
7, 2006 column
Email: maggie@maggievanostrand.com
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