Being a man, I am hesitant to come to salon.com these days. It is the home of retro-feminism blended with Marie Claire twaddle. But if the Ladies will allow, I'm sure Katie got a raw deal because she's a woman. No other reason is possible. Ratings and impulsive producers passing the buck never have anything to do with decisions on TV do they?

... when her most recent job was on the Today show, frolicking with Al Roker and making flambes.

It has nothing to do with gender. Matt Lauer would be equally ill-suited to hosting a serious news program. I just found it impossible to reconcile Couric's "Today" persona with her CBS persona, and I think a lot of other viewers had similar difficulty.

(Although I'm sure some just didn't like the idea of a woman doing what was always a man's job.)

again with the whining.....

it's always a man's fault. maybe Katie Couric is just an INFERIOR news anchor. ever thought of that?

ppl don't want her.

I would agree that Katie Couric was miscast in her role as news anchor, and that the network did some woefully stupid things (leg shots? Honestly. How come Dan Rather never had butt shots?)

However we deal out the blame, it doesn't change the fundamental problem that the network cast the wrong PERSON for the job, not the wrong gender.

Katie Couric was perfect in the morning--informal, upbeat, full of human interest shows about whatever was happening. The evening news is an entirely different format. There are plenty of women newscasters who could have pulled it off, but the network was trying to "spice up" its failing evening news show with adding Katie, and the attempt failed. People don't want spiced up evening news... they want serious, sober reporting. Plenty of women can do that job, and do it well. Unfortunately not Katie, or at least not with the zillions of different instructions the poor woman must have been getting every day as the ratings fell further.

"Be more upbeat! No, more serious! Be softer, we need more women viewers! Be funny, we need more laughs! Show your legs, maybe we'll get some men! Oh forget that, we need Walter Cronkite! Can you be him?"

I don't see this as a gender issue. I see it as an issue with a network that doesn't know what it wants. One woman cannot resurrect a dying format. If they'd gotten a serious, staid, calming presence, (male or female) they would have complained that he/she wasn't warm enough. They got their warm, human person, but she wasn't sober enough. Whatever.

Barbara Walters?

Connie Chung?

Or the unwillingness of any of us to 'embrace' any anchor at all, male or female. They're not demigods. We don't really have to fall in love with them, do we?

...not because of Katie Couric, but because the show started doing more and more puff pieces. It became painfully clear that CBS got a beat down for the Dan Rather issue and decided it was more profitable to show health updates and fluff than to do actual journalism.

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

It's got to be um, oh, what? Ah, yes: sexism.

I think the CBS wankers are using the sexism as a scapegoat for the ratings problems. The editors, producers, and executives don't want to take the blame for their lame product, so they blame Couric.

I don't think she's to blame. If she'd been asked to perform like any other news anchor, rather than the same old crap in a different package, she'd be no worse off than the other network anchors.

Does it TRULY serve the championing of gender & minority rights when a minority or female who fails / makes a misstep is automatically beatified as a victim or racism or sexism?

Katie Couric fails to make the CBS Evening News the #1 network news show in ratings. (She gets $15 million a year - and the show stays in the cellar at #3.)

Is she being pushed out because of failure to meet standards?

Nooooooo....it's only because of the evil sexist patriarchy.

Hillary Clinton was crowned the next Dem presidential nominee/President once she announced her candidacy in early 2007. Instead, an upstart called Barack Obama is giving her the struggle of a lifetime in competing for the nomination.

Is it because many voters have serious misgivings about Clinton's voting record, electability and platform?

Noooooo......it's only because of the evil sexist patriarchy.

Barry Bonds is as vilified as Mark McGwire & Roger Clemens. Michael Vick is tarred and feathered by the media and by animal lovers.

Is it because the former used steroids and sullied baseball's home run records...and because the latter committed indescribable acts of cruelty against dogs??

Noooooo......it's only because of the evil racist oppressors.

*********

~~sighhhh~~ When these knee-jerk reflexive defenses by well-meaning feminists and anti-racism activists finally cease, the progressive movement as a whole will earn a lot more respect...both from within (e.g. me) and from outsiders alike.

"Bennetts angrily describes how CBS suits turned Couric into a "nauseating female caricature," urging her to talk about her kids in between news segments and flashing her famous gams."

Are we talking about Katie Couric the human being, or Katie Couric the brand? Her failure as an anchor is a failure of her brand. The image that was constructed for the cameras didn't produce the desired effect, so it is being discarded.

Anymore, news anchors are more like actors than journalists. The information they present was gathered, processed, and usually explicitly written for them by other people. Saying that the CBS news program is failing because Couric is a woman is like blaming a bad movie on the gender of the female lead. You really should look at the executive directors if you want to know where the problem originated.

This is a poor example of sexism, because the causality is vague, and you can even argue that this is a good development. If there's any sexism here, its with the CBS executive staff who tried to build a news show around a pretty face, talk about kids and leg shots. That this failed miserably could speak well of the viewing public, who rejected that stereotype, and aren't interested in getting their news from somebody who sells it to them.