Katie Couric’s Signoff And Barnett’s Hope

After sacrificing not even a spare minute to thinking about Katie Couric’s sign-off (I almost wrote sigh-n-off, and I don’t even want to examine what the hell that would mean to Siggy), I have decided she’d do best sticking with something short and sweet, and which doesn’t lecture.

She should make it a curt and vonnegutesque (pun intended) “And so it goes…I’m Katie Couric, goodnight.”

UPDATE: I’ve been emailed by smart people that “And so it goes,” was (and perhaps is) Linda Ellerbee’s sign off for lo these many years, so okay, my idea stinks. My new suggestion:

“And so spins the world, much of it sound and fury, signifiying nothing. I’m Katie Couric, goodnight.”

Over at Hugh Hewitt’s place, Dean Barnett (not, as previously written, Hugh, himself) is admitting that he is hoping for a Couric failure and looks for her “sign off” to be more lasting “likely some time in early ’07.” He writes:
[…]
I find myself asking why I so openly pine for Couric’s failure. Really, I’m not a mean-spirited guy and Couric seems like a nice woman. Sure, she’s got a rap sheet that suggests left wing sympathies, but she would have to be an improvement on Dan Rather in that regard, right?[…]

After 9/11, we all realized the news was serious business. And yet five years later, CBS turns its news operation over to Couric who is decidedly not a journalist. She’s a personality, and CBS hopes to gain ratings by dint of her Q score. It’s craven and a bit stomach turning. [Emphasis mine – admin]

Heaven knows I’m no staunch feminist type, and if you’ve been reading, you know I am no Katiefan, but here is Couric’s bio:

Couric was a general assignment reporter for WRC-TV Washington, D.C., (1987-89) and for WTVJ Miami (1984-86). She worked for CNN (1980-84) as an assignment editor, associate producer, producer and, ultimately, political correspondent. Couric began her broadcast journalism career as a desk assistant at ABC News in Washington, D.C. (1979).

I don’t know if she is an exceptional writer – I’ve never had that sense, and it’s probably been a while since Couric has actually written her own copy – but here she sports a “from the ground up” CV in broadcast journalism. The fluffier segments of The Today Show and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade gig may give impetus to Barnett’s “personality” observation, but Bryant Gumbel (whom I can’t stand) worked The Today Show too, and so did ABC’s Hugh Downs, a long time ago, and I don’t see that translating into heaps of scorn for their current roles as journalists. In fact, I can remember when Hugh Downs was a game show host for “Concentration,” and that doesn’t seem to be getting in the way of his identity as a “newsman.”

To me it seems harsh to call Couric a “poseur” when discussing Couric’s Quote for the day entry:

Couric calls attention to CBS’s sins by trying so desperately and pathetically to be serious. Take today’s quote of the day from her blog, by Emerson:

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

Only a poseur would quote Emerson, but even more offensive is what the quote says. Is that not a wildly inappropriate sentiment for a person whose livelihood consists of reporting on what lies before us and behind us?

I have to disagree – I think when one’s “livelihood consists of reporting on what lies before us and behind us…” it is perhaps all the more important to stay grounded and centered and aware of what lies within us.

In fact, as a Christian who often writes about the hoary and spiritually damaging worlds of politics and media, Emerson’s quote could be considered a particularly valuable and insightful one. I can’t speak for any other Christian writer, but I find that when I lose sight of what is within me (because I’m too busy looking at what happened yesterday and what lies in store for us tomorrow) I do my worst writing. That’s when my analyses are most shallow and least edifying or convincing. Caught up in what is “outside,” my instincts become sublimated to all of that, as does prayer, and when I finally stop to look “within,” I find some ugliness I would rather not have entertained living inside me and displeasing God, and then all the things I’ve fussed and bothered about are indeed “tiny matters” compared to what my overattention to the world has done to my spirit and soul.

Looking at it from a Christian perspective, Barnett’s caustic observation of secular-journalist Couric’s apparent fondness for the quote seems almost ironic. I cannnot fault Couric for her preference.

And I am not quite sure why quoting Emerson is so bad, either. A quote is a quote, a pithy phrase or thought is a pithy phrase or thought. Who thought it and why makes for some interesting conversation, but how a thought (or quote) is received and internalized (and applied) finally says as much about the person receiving it as it does the one thinking it.

The last thing I ever intended was to become any sort of apologist for Katie Couric. But fair is fair. Some may think differently and that I am all wet.

Perhaps I am, but…so spins the world, much of it sound and fury, signifying nothing. I’m The Anchoress. Goodnight! :-)

More: Reader MarkP sends this observation by Mickey Kaus: Maybe Couric was hired by CBS solely to screw NBC’s highly-profitable Today Show!

Conspiracies everywhere!