most of the "anchors" on fox and cnn are women and most news shows have women as cohosts. It is probably true that they don't want it to look like a women only venue, but is the fact that something is not totally dominated by women evidence that women are being excluded or oppressed?

are on al jazeera. I'm not kidding.

Bill Hicks once did a bit about women priests. I tend to agree with him and think about the Nightly News anchor position the same way.

"People ask me what I think about that woman priest thing, you know. What, a woman priest? Women priests. Great, great. Now there's priests of both sexes I don't listen to. Ha, fuck, I don't care. Have a hermaphrodite one. I don't fucking care. Have one with three dicks and eight titties, I don't , I don't... You know, have one with gills and a trunk. That would be cool. I might go see that, you know, but... You know, I appreciate your quaint traditions and superstitions. I on the other hand am an evolved being who deals solely with the source of life, which exists in all of our hearts."

The pertinent question that nobody asks is "Who will do a better job of finding and reporting the news?". If the question is who reads a teleprompter better - count me out. That's no more important that deciding which puppet is going to make the crank call on Crank Yankers. Isn't the real position to get concerned about the one where the job is to choose what to report on?

If this were for any other vanity position women would be up in arms that men want somebody pretty to read them their weather (or whatever). But the legacy of an antiquated news delivery system seems to inspire lots of needless celebrityitis.

It does nothing to change the fact that all the nightly news programs serve the much more real purpose of providing an audience for the pharma companies to sell drugs to than they do to inform the public. The quality of news in these programs has gone through the floor. But that's not the topic of discussion. The topic is, who's going to read the teleprompter.

Don't file this under news, file this under celebrity gossip.

At least if Dowd was going to go to battle for a female anchor, she should be doing it for someone worthwhile.

Elizabeth Vargas' big claim to fame is doing primarily tabloid nonsense for ABC, all the while, wielding her trademark lip-curl and sneer, not to mention her snarky delivery.

I don't care if she's a woman...she's not a respected journalist!!!! She has no gravitas, and it has nothing to do with gender, it has to do with her performance...

She doesn't deserve a solo chair for Nightline, but then neither does her Ken doll co-host. Obviously, they decided that Ted Koppel needed to be replaced with twits to appeal to the "younger generation." Instead, it looks like Nightline's going to turn into a spiffed up "Hard Copy" or "Inside Edition."

Well, ABC, I'm from the younger generation, and to be honest, I'd rather have Koppel. I'd rather have pretty much anyone besides Vargas and Woodruff.

If this is what you're going to offer, I'm going to Charlie Rose permanently.

What's a little sad about all this is that one of the most talented writers of a generation, Maureen Dowd, has completely wasted her talent on this sort of fluff. Virtually no one writing in newspapers today has Dowd's skill at turning a phrase or crafing a sentence, but she's pissed it all away on half-witted pop-psych analysis of the country and various presidents. And because the NY Times needed a woman on its op-ed page and hired Dowd, we're all supposed to take it seriously. Writing for the NY Times doesn't mean I have to take David Brooks seriously, so why should I take Maureen Dowd seriously? She's got ten times the writing talent Mr Brooks does, but has half his ambition to actually write something worthwhile.

What's also a little sad is how Ms. Traister cannot see beyond her girl crush and realize what a waste of talent Ms. Dowd is and how shallow her conclusions are. It's not very sad, just a little sad.

and David Brooks may have ambitions but they haven't produced anything, except what can be measured by volume. As far as psychoanylsing groups and presidents go this seems as good an approach as any other since this president's policies do appear to spring straight from the right wing collective unconscious with scant to nonexistient rational filtering anyway.

The BBC has the right idea: the person who reads the news on the air is called, naturally enough, a "newsreader". The job calls for good diction and the ability to read smoothly from a teleprompter, and not having the kind of voice, style, or presentation that annoys the audience. It is not assumed that the best reporter will make the best presenter, and no one is looking for the reincarnation of Edward R. Murrow.

To the extent that network news executives worry about whether a candidate has sufficient "gravitas", they are only deluding themselves. For the fluffy product being put out today, the chief attribute the presenter needs is a lack of shame.

*SIGH* I'm so very tired of both.

I don't care what Faux News, ABC, etc. do with their anchors. I don't put a lot of value in TV news and when I do watch I'm interested in suscinct presentation of the facts without spin (thus, why I don't watch Faux News). I don't care what the gender of the news announcer is, I just wants the facts, ma'am.