Whoa, I didn’t hear about this! Dan has a drinking problem, or are you exaggerating for literary effct?
I work in broadcasting. Drop me an e-mail if you like.
Strangely enough, her segments tend to be about twenty minutes.
Jeezus tapdancin’ Christ, I used to watch the Today Show in the background when I was getting ready for work. I quit, due mostly in fact to the horrible schtick the wo-- the thing acted out daily. I felt dumber for having listened to her. I award me no points, and may God have mercy on our souls. . .
Thank God I switched to NPR.
Tripler
I heard she had a facelift. Bob Vila was on hand to finish the mud and taping.
“That’s like comparing an apple you want to sleep with to an orange you want to shoot.”
-Drew Carey
So Miss Katie trademarked (hell, incorporated) Perky and for this she gets the Big Bucks?
Wasn’t there an issue recently about her outfits (IMS, her clothes started looking like she was channelling Stevie Nicks via Janet Jackson)–and she had to tone it down for her audience? Was that the REAL KC or just another PR ploy?
I don’t watch daytime TV, except at work (it’s on in every pt’s room)–but I have seen enough of her over time to have my gag reflex triggered when I hear that voice.
And she is looking more and more like she was rode hard and put away wet.
I hate that women age more quickly in news than men, but in this case, since she is the Queen of Shallow–she knows the game better than anyone: time to retire, Katie. (not even Kate–Katie. What is she, 8?)
I gave up on any type of TV news when Peter Jennings died. BBC and NPR are all I can listen to.
The latter; except insofar as the excessive consumption of alcohol is the sine qua non of journalists of his generation, he has no drinking problem as far as I am aware. I found Rather disagreeable–even when I agreed with the gist of his commentary–and sometimes obtuse, but never outright stupid. It seemed clear that he knew what bias he was presenting and did so in a deliberate manner.
Couric, on the other hand…if she’s not utterly dim, she certainly seems to have only a vague awareness of the world outside of her very narrow, upper-middle class Westchester-esque view. This does not speak highly of her ability to provide informed coverage and commentary of world events. On the other hand, international news comprises an ever-decreasing segment of evening news programs in the US, and so perhaps she’d simply be leading the trend of ever-softer overall news programming. This is assuming, of course, that she’d continue the role of “news anchor” rather than newsreader. If her position is merely to be a talking head who annunciates clearly from the teleprompter without interjecting opinion or directing investigations then I think it’s merely a matter of CBS spending way to much for a competent reader rather than a deterioration of jouralistic standards.
In any case, I still think that Lynne Russell would be the best write-in candidate. I just loved the expressions she made during the 1996 election campaign.
Stranger
Marketing department-created neologisms offend me, that’s why.
“Counterman” was a perfectly good word to describe the occupation. “Counterperson” would be adequate, IMHO. “Coffee server” would do quite nicely, thank you.
I’m looking at you, Starbucks. Take your “barista” and your “venti”, cram them up your metaphorical ass, and ask the coffee server to pour me an extra-large cup of coffee.
Thats like comparing a bartender to a consession stand employee that hands you a cup of beer. Making a cappuccino takes a great deal of training skill. More so than a bartender in fact. There are international competitions for barristas, a barrista guild, and and schools that do nothing but train them.
Starbucks has nothing to do with it. Starbucks is the McDonalds of coffee shops. Knowing how to pull a perfect shot (or even knowing what one is) and how to properly steam and froth milk to get perfect microfoam is something that doesnt just happen. Coffee Server is some one who serves coffee. Thats not what a barrista does.
google “latte art” some time and fight a little ignorance.
Oh, and it has nothing to do with a marketing department. Its what the trade has been called probably since before you were born. Starbucks didn’t invent espresso.
Consider it fought. But please note that I was looking at Starbucks when I made my complaint; and the fact that their marketing department has hijacked the name of a legitimate art form to bestow upon their concession stand employees offends me even more than a neologism would.
Courage! 
Re. Katie not knowing “barista”: that’s probably a reflection of her not having to get in line and buy her own Starbucks. That’s the thing with the rich & famous – between their personal assistants and the go-fers and production assistants they get to use at work, they almost never have to do anything menial. (Remember back when the first Pres. Bush was slammed for not having the faintest idea what a gallon of milk cost… and for never having seen a grocery store bar code scanner before? Bingo.)
And re. the friend who works at CBS and can attest to KC’s bitchitude? Tell us more, if you can, please!
Snopes doesn’t remeber that.
The thing is, why should a television news anchor be a former reporter? They don’t report the news, they read the news. The ideal newsreader/anchor should be easy on the eyes, easy on the ears, and be able to read a teleprompter convincingly. Much better to hire an actor/spokesmodel like Katie Couric to read your news than a former reporter like Dan Rather.
I quit that show years ago and switched over to Fox & Friends. I haven’t stopped laughing since… that crew is hysterical! No regrets.
Why pay a newsreader $8M+? In the US, news anchors (at least on the broadcast news) have been genuine journalists, responsible for directing content, managing investigations, and themselves performing hard-news interviews. They’re not just a face but a visible responsible party for the content of the news, hence Dan Rather’s (reluctant) mea culpa with regard to the obviously faked Bush paperwork. It’s an accountability for news organizations that are otherwise in thrall of the megacorporations that own them, a visible check against news manipulation.
Heck, I question that Couric could even manage the strict reading part correctly. This is a woman who somehow confuses Italy with Argentina. And I fear that with evening news coverage, America might be subjected to even more than images of the inside of her colon. shudder
I’d sooner they hire Dennis Miller to read the news.
Stranger
You do realize that the correct Italian spelling is “barista” (only one r)? Also, why are most so-called “barista schools” in the U.S. and hardly any in Italy? Most “baristas” here in Europe learn how to “pull a shot” on the job, or at the regular Hotel or Restaurant School where they learn their profession.
There is none of this pretentious ceremony when you order an espresso or a cappucino at your local cafe, and they taste a lot better than any of that high-priced Starbucks crap.
Snopes’ examination of Bush’s ill-fated visit to the Nat. Grocers’ Convention in 1992 certainly casts some doubt on the original instigator, Andrew Rosenthal of the *NY Times *, of the “Bush’s amazement” spin on the story. Rosenthal, like the other reporters whose similarly-spun stories on the incident were quoted in the Snopes article, wasn’t present at the event and had to thus rely on the account of the sole pool reporter who was allowed to cover it. This pool reporter didn’t emphasize the angle that Rosenthal would seize upon, although he had noted a “look of wonder” on Bush’s face. Whether the “look of wonder” was a sufficient basis for playing up the angle that Bush was unfamiliar with the technology is perhaps debatable. (Perhaps he was just humoring the guy. But even if that was the case, if he doesn’t want to be portrayed by the press as being amazed by a supermarket scanner, maybe he shouldn’t pretend to the conventioneers to be amazed if that isn’t his genuine reaction.)
OTOH, this excerpt of the Times’ review of the incident establishes what for me would be a sufficient basis for the amazement attributed by Rosenthal to Bush’s reaction:
In defense of all the reporters who emphasized the “Bush was amazed” story, it’s part of their job to find an angle of interest in these dry, perfunctory press pool accounts from the campaign trail. This whole story serves as an object lesson on the unexpected blowback resulting from a campaign’s attempts to stage-manage the press’ coverage of their candidate. The anti-Bush spin might even have been defused from the start had press coverage of the event been open to a larger pool of reporters – if for no other reason than the nuances of Bush’s apparent reaction to the technology might well have been generally interpreted by a consensus view that Bush appeared bored but was politely humoring the conventioneer, etc.
Also, and this is a purely snarky nitpick on my count, I’d have a bit more confidence in the infallibility of the Snopes write-up if they’d gotten the year of the incident right. It happened in 1992, and not 1988, as stated at the very top of the entry.
Also, they didn’t defend their version of the story very convincingly. Some White House flack was quoting as saying that he remembered the President recently shopping in a supermarket, to support him being “in the loop” on modern grocery technology, but I thought that it would have been a hell of a lot more persuasive for him to have claimed that he went shopping with Bush in the Piggley-Wiggley on the corner of Macinaw and Pomerantz on or around last June 12th, etc. (which then would have been subject to verification by the clerks in that particular store.) Since all we got was a vague and unverifiable statement, I take it as self-serving b.s.
Or Anne Curry, the newsbabe, just like Matt moved over when Bryant Gumble finnnnnaaaaallllyyyy left the show.
Has anyone even bothered to check her bio before trashing her?
From Wiki:
She’s a UVA grad, with a tremendous work ethic, who has risen through the ranks in a fairly long, distinguished career. Dumb as rocks? Hardly.
That’s nothing to laugh at folks.