Personal Asides: Katie Couric is a Cutie. But She No PM Anchor…You Think Pfleger’s Got No Clout?... Ralph Martire vs. Russ Stewart on Sunday’s “Shootout.”

Couric.

With that little kid next store beguiling smile, a lilt in the way she tosses her hair and a refreshingly slim matron of fifty who looks like she just came from a game of tennis, Katie Couric could do almost anything…from the host of the highly-rated “Today” to playing a role of a with-it suburban housewife on daytime TV to a Mom-style detective on a top-rated television detective series. Anything but which the retardate network, CBS hired her to do…give gravitas needed to divulge the evening news which involves mayhem in Iraq, hidden negotiations in Canberra, a behind-the-closed-doors political deal involving immigration in Washington. Anyone could tell you she’d be no good at that. And she is no good: like the late Nancy Merchand (who played Tony Soprano’s mother) doing early morning up-and-at-`em TV exercises.

I could have told them Couric (whom I liked very much on “Today”) would be no good. It’s like having a younger Doris Day…freckle-faced and all…telling you about how big bad men deliver bulky bribe envelopes full of cash to other guys while they stand at twin urinals in men’s wash rooms at the state capitol. You take a look at her and you know she wouldn’t know…she couldn’t fathom… a thing about it. It’s like hiring the violet-eyed girl-child Elizabeth Taylor was in “National Velvet” to talk about quantum physics. Bad messenger.

Everybody knew she was miscast except the biggest slug of all, Les Moonves, who now condemns us for being sexist because we won’t accept stories of Baghdad bombings coming from Little Mary Sunshine. And to make matters worse, that oaf, Dan Rather, actually did go sexist, saying Moonves was trying to “tart up the news.” Anything Couric isn’t is a tart; she’s the perky girl next door.

Come on, Dan. You’re history and a jerk of history. But Moonves, the president of CBS who could easily be cast as a hollow-suited Ted Baxter. Moonves is a soulless marketer with no feel for news integrity: the closest he gets to actual news reportage is when he cuddles with his sloe-eyed, beauteous Asian CBS anchor wife. No, evening TV news with all its ugliness of betrayal, murder, lying, duplicity, perversion, depravity, aberrance and debaucheries deserves to be delivered by the ugliest, fattest old man there is, with jowls waggling, who has seen it all—the Depression 1930s, wartime `40s, too eager-to-please Organization Men of the `50s, the white guilt and black power of the `60s; the agony of Vietnam and Nixonian hypocrisy of the `70s; the rebirth of optimism of the Reagan `80s, the hoarse-voiced lying of the Clinton `90s, the failure of liberal will of the softy, too-affluent `00s.

Get the hook for Katie. And, yes, I’m available, although a tad too young at 78.

Pfleger.

In case anybody out there regards Fr. Michael Pfleger as a radical priest with no clout in City Hall, please remember what we learned offhandedly today from Fran Spielman that he serves under appointment by Mayor Daley on one of the most important and prestigious commissions in all city government—the commission that is studying names of candidates to head a soon-to-be-independent agency charged with investigating police wrong-doing. Years ago under Daley, Sr. civic leaders who would be entrusted with a membership of that kind would resemble Patrick O’Malley, chairman emeritus of Canteen Corporation, civic fund-raiser, confidant and bosom pal who was chairman of the Park Board and of numberless Daley-sponsored civic improvement groups, the first man Daley talked to each morning and the last man he talked with at night.

If you don’t think times have changed, consider that now on the police oversight committee is a rebel priest and media darling who has threatened murder of a businessmen and certain lawmakers. Outside of that he’s fine.

And you thought Pfleger was only a street-corner haranguer.

Martire vs. Stewart.


Ralph Martire, director of the Center for Budget and Tax Accountability, a regular columnist for the “Sun-Times” and attorney, journalist and political analyst Russ Stewart will appear this Sunday on “Political Shootout” to review, among other things, the deadlocked legislative session. Both are extremely well-versed and look for generation of both light and, possibly, some heat.