Like Barbara Walters and Connie Chung before her, Katie is not finding that the network anchor chair is a warm, friendly or safe place.
But unlike Babs and Connie, the real reason Katie will not achieve anchor gravitas has more to do with her personal life than her ability to read a teleprompter or get along with jealous co-anchors.
The truth is Katie could have overcome her perky personality. She is smart. She is a hard-worker. And she knows how to interview people. Professional ability is not necessarily her problem.
Her undoing will not be about her ability. Her undoing will be that she has a boyfriend 17 years her junior. In other words, Katie is tadpoling.
"Tadpoling" is a new phrase coined by Miramax films, defined as a woman who dates a man at least 10 years her junior. The idea behind the term plays on the fairytale ending of the princess kissing a toad, thus turning it into her Prince Charming. If the “toad” is young enough, he is referred to as a "tadpole."
While a male anchor with a girlfriend seventeen years his junior would not cause a viewer to blink, having the widow Couric frolic with a 33 year-old creates, as Robert DiNero said in , "Meet The Fockers," a chink in the chain.
It's difficult to view Couric as someone who eats, sleeps, and breathes the news when her viewers know that she is eating and sleeping with a man who technically is young enough to be her son. For someone who wants the American public to trust them...having a boy-toy creates a totally different image. While people might be able to divorce a newsman's personal life from his work, not so with a newswoman.
Had Katie met the boyfriend after she had settled into the job, perhaps the damage would not be as severe as it is. But news of the boyfriend is breaking just as rumors are surfacing that co-workers are feeding journalists negative stories. Gail Shister's April 22, 2007 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer is rumored to be sourced by Katie's colleagues Bob Schieffer and Leslie Stahl.
Then there are the less than flattering articles in the New York Times ( subscription required ) by TV Critic Alessandra Stanley that wrote that during the Virginia Tech coverage Charlie Gibson "won" because he is seen as America's newsman, citing ,
"His interview with a group of survivors on Tuesday night was more bearable to watch, mostly because his questions, posed in a kindly but neutral manner, solicited information, not emotion.
As far as Katie goes, Ms.Stanley opted to comment on fashion and makeup. Ouch.
"Ms. Couric, who anchored Monday's broadcast in white slacks and very little makeup to signal to viewers that she was hard at work in the field"
Add to that, there's that messy bit of plagiarism on her blog-- where it was learned that Katie isn't writing her blog, a producer is and that said producer was the plagiarizer.
On top of all these missteps the news of Katie's new relationship.
No one of course will say it. That would be so 1960s. But it's there. The jokes. The raised eyebrows. The snickers. The robbing the cradle jokes. For someone who wants to transform themselves from America's Cheerleader to America's newsperson, this isn't helping her image. And when it comes to earning the trust of American public, image is what its all about.
When the Philadelphia Inquirer ran its scathing story on Katie, it also ran a poll. Here are the results as of this morning.
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