While TV news ratings as a whole have plummeted (“Even Before Summer, Big 3 Nets’ Evening News Viewership Is Under 20 Million”, BizzyBlog noted last month), Katie Couric, at the bottom of the pack, demonstrates her gravitas as a newsreader by riffing on hermaphrodite jokes about her ratings.
Tim Graham documents the verbal carnage:
Longtime Minneapolis Star Tribune gossip columnist C.J. demonstrated how that “goddess” Katie Couric can make jokes about her own horrendous ratings, now setting a new low of 5.18 million viewers, the lowest in at least 17 years. Couric surprised local gay radio host Jason Matheson on his radio show, who claims to have a “Silence of the Lambs-type” shrine to Couric at his house:
Said Matheson: “I’m just a simple little gay boy with a crush on Katie Couric.”
“Get in line,” said Couric with a sassy, guttural aplomb. “For whatever reason, I have some gay fans. I am very flattered my gay friends enjoy my work. Gay, straight, I’ll take anybody at this point, hermaphrodites.”
When Matheson remarked that during down moments, Thompson plays the theme to the “CBS Evening News” to cheer him up, Couric joked, “That is sad. I wouldn’t tell anyone that.”
The article is headlined “Shrine to Katie Couric brings a call from the goddess herself.” In the video accompanying the story online, Matheson plays the CBS open on his iPhone, complete with Cronkite voiceover and Couric declaring “Hi everyone. I’m very happy to be with you tonight.”
There’s no word from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to suggest Couric’s joke was considered too insulting to actual hermaphrodites or “transgendered” Americans.
As far as the low ratings, you can simply recall Dana Carvey as George H. W. Bush and his line about Dan Quayle. Just put Katie in that line instead: “Katie Couric….still…gaining…acceptance.”
Gosh, if only the mass medium that employs Couric hadn’t work so hard to alienate half her prospective audience (when she wasn’t doing it herself) in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2009…
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