Katie Couric might be third place in network news, but she’s #1 in Howard Kurtz’s heart! Recently the Perkiest Anchor Ever talked to the brand-new Daily Beastmaster about getting back to her roots (as, um, a reporter?), instead of just shutting up and enjoying how much CBS is overpaying her to sit around with her legs crossed:
“It’s great for me to get out of the chair and into the world,” she says. “I started out as a reporter, and I still enjoy reporting.”
Rick Kaplan, her executive producer, says that “when she’s on the road—in Iraq with David Petraeus—she has a great way with people. People like her and she likes them. There are anchors who consider being on the road a pain in the butt. She really looks for opportunities to feel the earth and touch people.”
That’s why Couric has spent recent weeks in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is touring what she calls “this great unwashed middle of the country” in an effort to divine the mood of the midterms.
One way to show you’ve figured out the public’s mood is to call them the “great unwashed.” They love that all the way out in New Brunswick, which she can’t even see from her office! You have to admire her bravery, venturing to the wilds of Chicago. Imagine the chill up her spine at the thought of all those lumpenproles she was flying over.
You probably think Couric was being condescending and arrogant. Of course not, you dumb rube! Sensing that her wise words may have been misinterpreted, Couric took to Twitter to clarify:
Twitter’s 140-character limit prevented her from adding, “I’ll type slowly so you can understand me.”
Howie backed that ass up:
That’s right: Katie Couric and Howard Kurtz just patiently explained that you’re not sophisticated enough to understand when you’re being talked down to. In that same spirit, I can assure Ms. Couric that I’m not being disparaging when I call her a vapid, witless Tolkien creature.
P.S. Katie Couric might be the best journalist ever.
P.P.S. Allahpundit: “She didn’t mean it in a ‘these ignorant peasants sure do smell when they haven’t bathed’ way. She meant it in an ‘I love to chat with these ignorant peasants no matter what they smell like’ way.” And Lileks: “By the way, the line ‘the great unwashed’ came from Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the Victorian writer who also gave us the phrase ‘It was a dark and stormy night.'”
P.P.P.S. Does Unilever advertise on the CBS Evening News?
P.P.P.P.S. I’d forgotten about this one…
