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TV TATTLE

Katie Couric's memoir is "ugly, misogynistic stuff"

  • "What on earth is Katie Couric thinking?" asks Maureen Callahan. "Most people write a memoir to settle scores, make a buck, burnish their legacy. Not Couric. In her cattily-titled Going There, she decides to show that the rumors were true all along: Couric was out of her depth in network news, not nearly as smart as she’d have us think, and her bubbly girl-next-door act was just that. An act. Couric makes it clear from the start that she has never been an ally to other women. Aside from the female colleagues she disparages, name-calls, alienates and humiliates — I’ll get to those in a moment — she would have us believe, in her great delusion, that she was a superstar journalist and intellectual who nevertheless had no idea about Harvey Weinstein. Never heard a thing, she writes." Callahan adds: "Couric reveals more about herself than she seems to realize: Namely, that she is the kind of terrible woman who hates most other women and likes only those she considers inferior, not as successful, no threat in the looks department. It’s the kind of self-loathing that allows her to defend monsters like Matt Lauer and blame all the pretty young things for bringing this on themselves....Katie Couric is the worst kind of hypocrite. She uses this book to posit herself as some kind of feminist trailblazer with a substantive legacy in news, when in truth she’s a vindictive backstabber who hides behind that irritating smile, who blames others for her downward trajectory — from Today to her disastrous short tenure at CBS Evening News to a poorly-executed talk show to Yahoo! to Instagram Stories or whatever she’s doing now. It all begs the question: Why did she write this book? Is it a money grab? Couric clearly wants to cement her own legacy, but she doesn’t get how terribly she comes across. There is zero self-awareness here, personally or professionally."

    TOPICS: Katie Couric, Matt Lauer, TV Books