She referred to the Taliban in Afghanistan as "Al Qaeda's best friends," as if the two groups schedule play dates. Oh, God, you thought, here it comes, what's been brewing for months and what the pundits have been pundit-ing about. It's the Katie-ing of the evening news; let the infantilizing begin.
Al Qaeda's \o7best friends\f7? Would Murrow have said that? Cronkite? Rather? That last guy?
And yet, nobody can turn a frown upside down the way Katie Couric can. Which is precisely why she gets away with "Al Qaeda's best friends" and why Tuesday's debut showed she is such a great choice to drag a moribund format not so much into the next century as toward the next iteration of what is, in a large sense, a commercial enterprise.
Couric, under the weight of it all, seemed to have taken herself down a notch; she might even have been nervous, quickly correcting herself when she flubbed the word "soil." On "Today" she could joke her way out of a gaffe; here, she was auditioning for the biggest part in her life.
With a woman, Nancy Pelosi, 15 Democratic seats away from having a good shot at becoming the first female speaker of the House, Couric is the first female solo Speaker of the Evening News.
And she's an ideal figure to ease a transition toward a more accessible, less arch media elite. She had toured the country, conducting town halls on what people want, and her first broadcast practically came with a How's My Driving? bumper sticker: She's taking suggestions on what her sign-off should be, and she introduced a soapbox segment called "Free Speech" that invites guest contributors to the nightly news.
Mostly, though, Couric brought what the evening news hasn't had in some time: buzz. (It's like Hollywood's best friend).
Couric is reportedly making $15 million a year in her new job. What, you wanted CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves to spend that beefing up overseas bureaus? He knows you don't watch the evening news, because he probably doesn't either. And frankly, why should you or he? I mean, what's on network news each night is far more in depth than the news crawl in an elevator and not as scary as Wolf Blitzer's Panic Room on CNN. But still, it isn't as good as the video and context you get on public television or the BBC or C-SPAN -- except in a crisis, and even then, all of our crisis counselors have gone: the late Peter Jennings, disgraced Dan Rather, gracefully retiring Tom Brokaw.
