Couric: I’m the only woman news anchor, poor me

posted at 5:47 pm on January 17, 2007 by Ian
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Katie starts her “blog” post by writing that she noticed something “unusual” during a top secret White House briefing she and other network news anchors had with “unnamed VERY senior administration officials” prior to the President’s address on Iraq last week. She thought it was “unusual” that she was, gasp, the only woman anchor in the room. Which, as an experienced journalist, she was bound to notice:

And yet, the meeting was a little disconcerting as well. As I was looking at my colleagues around the room—Charlie Gibson, George Stephanopoulos, Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer, Wolf Blitzer, and Brit Hume—I couldn’t help but notice, despite how far we’ve come, that I was still the only woman there. Well, there was some female support staff near the door. But of the people at the table, the “principals” in the meeting, I was the only one wearing a skirt. Everyone was gracious, though the jocular atmosphere was palpable.

So if Wolf Blitzer showed up in a skirt, that would make it better? Anyway. And women can’t be “jocular,” palpably or otherwise? Katie, to paraphrase Chevy Chase Dan Akroyd, you’re a humorless scold.

Couric credits feminism for having made “tremendous strides” for womankind, but there’s more work to do:

The feminist movement that began in the 1970’s helped women make tremendous strides—but there still haven’t been enough great leaps for womankind. Fifty-one percent of America is female, but women make up only about sixteen percent of Congress—which, as the Washington Monthly recently pointed out, is better than it’s ever been…but still not as good as parliaments in Rwanda (forty-nine percent women) or Sweden (forty-seven percent women). Only nine Fortune 500 companies have women as CEO’s.

That meeting was a reality check for me—and not just about Iraq. It was a reminder that all of us still have an obligation to ask: Don’t more women deserve a place at the table too?

And while Katie fretted about her skirt and waxed poetic about the long, hard slog to shatter the glass ceiling in war-torn Fortune 500 boardrooms in tremendous strides of self-absorption, Michelle Malkin put on body armor and walked around Baghdad with the US Army without makeup or a single complaint. Which one is the feminist icon again?

I can’t wait until Rush tomorrow.

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