The New Republic

Isn't Diane Sawyer a 100 years old? Sure, another leap forward for women. But what about the glass ceiling [applicable to both men and women...but to women especially] that requires almost all applicants to be gorgeous? Does the expression "money honeys" ring a bell? When does THAT glass ceiling come tumbling down? Yeah, there are a smattering of folks at the top in broadcast news who wouldn't win any beauty contests. True. But come on.... How much has really changed since Tom Grunick and Aaron Altman went toe to toe in Broadcast News? george

- iambiguous

September 2, 2009 at 3:23pm

The truth is that Katie Couric and Diane Sawyer are getting these jobs just as they've become totally irrelevant. Only old people watch the nightly news these days [notice all those ads for dentures and bladder control?]. The notion of tuning in at a specific time to get the news every night, read to you by some stuffed shirt [or blouse] is on life support. As it should be. Couric, Sawyer and Williams are monarchs of tiny and increasingly tinier queen/kingdoms.

- DC Spence

September 2, 2009 at 3:36pm

George, Your last post actually made sense. Just out of curiosity, what does the "d/a" you often sign under your name mean?

- malahat

September 2, 2009 at 6:09pm

b14: Your last post actually made sense. george: Hey, I see no need to insult me. I bust my ass trying to live up to Jackson's and Liberal Reformer's opinion of me. D/A stands for my two closest friends, Danny and Anne [or Annie as we all call her]. I tag them them under my name because my contributions to TNR are always on two tracks. On one I contribute as enthusiastically as all the rest of you---in order to express my opinions regarding the "the news". On the other track, however, I use my contributions here in my excursions into the world of cyber philosophy. Danny and Annie were a husband and wife team I met on the nihilism deck of the Jolly Roger. One of the very first discussion venues devoted to both philosophy and literature. We interact with other philosophy fanatics in a tag team we call The Troupe. It is an attempt to replicate the world John Fowles created in The Magus out in cyberspace. In philosophy discussion rooms we encounter what Will Durant called "the epistemologists". Or what we call "the abstractionists". We are existentialists so the whole point is to yank the analytic purveyers of what is called "critical rationalism" down to earth. Here at TNR, in discussing and debating "the news", a lot of the exchanges are necessarily about human behavior brought down out of the clouds. So, we use my posts as a diving board into the hallowed halls and the ivory towers of academic philosophy. george

- iambiguous

September 2, 2009 at 8:43pm

George, Thank you for the response.

- malahat

September 2, 2009 at 9:27pm

First off, Sawyer will get less abuse than Couric because she'll be better. Second, we're not back to the whole Hillary-and-the-glass-ceiling thing, are we? Hillary was the glass ceiling. The "glass ceiling" in politics consists of nothing more or less than the existence of networks of insiders who control money and media access such that people on the inside of their little bubble have huge advantages over people on the outside. That those with the insider connections are almost all men is neither here nor there; it's not about gender, it's about access. And Hillary's entire solo political career was based on exploiting privileged access to her husband's insider networks, which were among the most powerful in the country. A "glass ceiling" only makes sense if it is a metaphor for an invisible barrier preventing further a person from rising further; Hillary Clinton's experience is nearly the exact opposite of that concept: an invisible platform propelling her swiftly upward to heights no similarly situated person of any gender not married to a former president could possibly attain. Her campaign for president was funded, staffed, and sustained beyond all reason by the very people and networks that make up the invisible barrier to outsider candidates such as all women not named "Clinton." The first woman to be elected president will not be following in Hillary's footsteps, because Hillary tread entirely in George W. Bush's footsteps, laving none of her own, and there's nothing new about that path to the presidency.

- rhubarbs

September 2, 2009 at 10:39pm