K-K-K-Katie, Stupid Katie

Did you 60 Minutes on Sunday? What the fuck was that?

With the current state of the mainstream televised media being complete shit, 60 Minutes has been the one place that I could count on for (mostly) good journalism. Not any more.

Not since Katie Couric has darkened their halls.

After that total fucking puff piece on Condoleezza Rice, the last bastion of respectable journalism on network TV has begun it's long slide into the world inhabited by Geraldo, Soledad O'Brien, Larry King and the rest of the "newstainment" hacks that have taken over the media.

I forgot I was watching 60 Minutes last night and thought someone had switched the channel to FOX News with the major ass kissing Dr. Rice was getting. At one point Condi got to get in her straw man argument, a favorite tactic of the Bush administration. She actually compared black people being denied the right to vote in the south during Jim Crow to those people that are against her illegal and immoral war in Iraq. The straw man moment came when she said this:

"Well, growing up in the South and having people underestimate you because one of the reasons for segregation, one of the reasons for the separation of the races was supposedly, the inferiority of one race to the other," she explains. "And so when I look around the world and I hear people say, 'Well, you know, they're just not ready for democracy,' it really does resonate. I hear echoes of, well, you know, blacks are kind of childlike. They really can't handle the vote. Or they really can't take care of themselves. It really does roil me. It makes me so angry because I think there are those echoes of what people once thought about black Americans."

No follow up question was asked. And , of course, that question should have been, "WHO THE FUCK IS MAKING THAT ARGUMENT YOU STUPID BITCH?! NAME ME ONE OPPONENT OF YOUR BLOODY WAR THAT HAS SAID THAT THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE EAST ARE 'JUST NOT READY FOR DEMOCRACY.' JUST ONE."

Of course it should have been asked without the yelling, swearing and name calling, but you get the point. This is the way Karl Rove has taught all his evil minions to work in interviews. Instead of actually answering the questions or charges brought by their opponents, they just make up weak and dumb arguments that no one is actually making and knock those down.

And then of course, there was the dating question. Katie actually asked how one goes about asking the Secretary of State out on a date and then held her hand up to her head like a phone (you know, pinky at the mouth and thumb at the ear) and said "Hi, Madame Secretary? Listen," and giggled as she did it. Katie Couric is in her late forties, not her early teens, just in case there was any confusion.

I was reminded of a joke Tina Fey made on the SNL news when CBS was hiring Couric and said something along the lines of CBS was doing it because they wanted more uncomfortable flirting in their interviews. Well, here it was.

Really, at this point there would have been no surprise if Condi said, breathily, "Well Katie, I just haven't found anyone 'special,'" and then we heard a 70s wonkie guitar and Condi just hiked up her skirt, went spread eagle and Katie just dove right in for some porno girl on girl action. I mean, she was already doing it figuratively, why not just commit fully to the job?

Katie Couric gets $15 million a year to read a teleprompter for about 20 minutes a day and do the occasional People Magazine-like stories on 60 minutes. And in the process is destroying the road for female journalists that was paved by the likes of Helen Thomas, who has to spend her days getting ignored in presidential press conferences for asking too hard of questions.

I would wonder how Couric can sleep at night, but I'm pretty sure the 15 mil helps a lot.

But shame on her. And an even bigger shame on the shallow men who run that industry and hire non-threatening, airheaded bimbos instead of the real female journalists out there.