Let Katie Be Katie

I keep watching Katie Couric in her new role as CBS Evening News anchor, but it's painful. I've seen people uncomfortable in the wrong job before, and she surely is in this one. Maybe she has chosen to take on the personna of gravitas that I see, but I get the feeling it's not her natural choice; someone seems to be coaching her--maybe lots of someones, and they're coaching her all wrong. It's just not Katie. It's some woman trying extremely hard to deliver the world news in all its seriousness and not make light of anything. Not even lighten up about anything. Not even in the moments between stories or at the end of the program after the goodnights are said. The dour, rather furrowed brows remain till the fade to black. And that's not the Katie Couric I know, not the Katie of the Today Show, which isn't surprising, nor the Katie of the silver screen or tv guest appearances. Katie Couric has a smile and an impish, giggling laugh that is irrepressible and iconoclastic. Whenever Matt Lauer would try to get too serious, Katie could break the chill in an instant with her gentle barbs and puncture the pomposity of nearly everyone. Now, however, she has been thoroughly made over into THE FIRST FEMALE NETWORK ANCHOR, as if the title carried with it some kind of royal responsibility to maintain our composure and dignity at all costs--for the good of--who? the nation? the network? the ratings--ah, that's surely it. It always is, isn't it. But whoever is behind the new Katie should be fired. This very lovely, smart, talented and warmly human lady can do this new job in a wonderful way if she is allowed to bring the Katie we all came to love to the task. Let Katie be Katie. She won't giggle at the wrong times. And if she did, it couldn't be worse than the sad-faced, over-serious, furrowed mask she's affecting now.