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Katie Couric: It’s great to be traveling America among “the great unwashed” (That means most of you)
Hotair ^ | 10/26/2010 | Allahpundit

Posted on 10/27/2010 7:19:43 AM PDT by WebFocus

It’s not as bad as it sounds. She didn’t mean it in a “these ignorant peasants sure do smell when they haven’t bathed” way. She meant it in a “I love to chat with these ignorant peasants no matter what they smell like” way. She’s a people person, guys. Accept it.

Rick Kaplan, her executive producer, says that “when she’s on the road—in Iraq with David Petraeus—she has a great way with people. People like her and she likes them. There are anchors who consider being on the road a pain in the butt. She really looks for opportunities to feel the earth and touch people.”

That’s why Couric has spent recent weeks in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and New Brunswick, New Jersey. She is touring what she calls “this great unwashed middle of the country” in an effort to divine the mood of the midterms.

Therein lies a key reason why Couric has sometimes struggled in her current job. She’s always seemed constrained by the rigid, 22-minute format, a far cry from her freewheeling Today performances over a decade and a half. So she has devised ways to slip out of her $15 million-a-year prison—launching a Web show, engaging on Twitter, and getting out in the field.

Says James Lileks, who reminds us that “the great unwashed” is a phrase coined by one of the world’s most notoriously bad writers:

If you can name the crime that will get me committed to a $15-million-a-year-prison, I will endeavor to commit it posthaste. But perhaps the reason she’s struggled is contained in her quote: the middle of the country suspects she regards them as hobnailed dirt-smeared dullards. It fits with the idea that real America – smart, credentialed, urban, sophisticated – exists in a thin crust on either coast, with the rest of the country a parenthetical insert in the national narrative. Unwashed. Criminey.

No, amend that. “Real America,” according to the coastal cultural viziers, is middle America, and that’s the problem. “Better America” is what you get in New York. But only between certain cross-streets.

I wonder if Katie would agree, even privately. Just as everyone thinks they have a sense of humor, everyone thinks they’re a populist — or rather, everyone thinks they’re not an elitist. Salary’s no barrier: Plenty of conservative media personalities do extremely well financially yet would bristle at the suggestion that they’re among the elite. Politics is, in theory, no barrier either: I don’t think of, say, Ralph Nader as an elitist even though he’s farrrrr left ideologically. The combination of salary and politics might be lethal, though. Is there even a single rich liberal out there whom righties wouldn’t instantly assume looks at middle America as the “great unwashed”? The only one who pops to mind is Bill Clinton but I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: america; greatunwashed; ilovethelittlepeople; katieantoinette; katiecouric
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To: WebFocus
We've already established what she is....
(MSM "PRIME RIB")

**************

Katie_boogie

**************

Apparently--- we are now merely haggling over the price...
[15 MIL????}

**************

Katie_scared

21 posted on 10/27/2010 7:40:06 AM PDT by Wings-n-Wind (The main things are the plain things!)
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To: WebFocus

Peter Jennings, a former anchor of ABC News did take time to drive all through the real middle America. He reported back to the viewers (that’s when ABC actually HAD viewers) how hard working and decent and friendly (real) Americans are. I think he wanted to say that those people really do deserve everyone’s respect and admiration.

I’ve heard Peter Jennings; I’ve watched Peter Jennings...katie couric - you are no Peter Jennings.


22 posted on 10/27/2010 7:40:45 AM PDT by MichaelCorleone
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To: WebFocus

Being unwashed in the sewage of coastal liberalism is a good thing.


23 posted on 10/27/2010 7:42:27 AM PDT by FourPeas (Pester not the geek, for the electrons are his friends.)
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To: WebFocus

Since Perky Katie is only going to urban areas, this sounds RACIST to me. Someone page Jesse and Al!


24 posted on 10/27/2010 7:44:01 AM PDT by RightGeek (FUBO and the donkey you rode in on)
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To: WebFocus

Only people I’ve known who are unwashed are homeless, hippies or French. Go away Couric.


25 posted on 10/27/2010 7:44:26 AM PDT by November 2010
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To: Texas Eagle

To a geographically challenged idiot like Couric, anything west of Cincinnati is unsettled territory still occupied by native Indians and buffalo hunters, until you get to Los Angeles.


26 posted on 10/27/2010 7:46:04 AM PDT by crosshairs (Guns have two enemies: Rust and Politicians)
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To: UCANSEE2
NOT REALLY. The real WHY is that they are trying to keep her busy on wild goose chases, and keep her OFF THE AIR, while she finishes her ‘contract’.

(Snort!) And the mouse took the cheese.
27 posted on 10/27/2010 7:47:09 AM PDT by crosshairs (Guns have two enemies: Rust and Politicians)
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To: WebFocus

Great, Katie’s out spreading bedbugs beyond her native habitat.

Think of the cost incurred to get rid of the sneaky little bloodsuckers in her wake. They’re not even honest like a tick, they hide out until you’re asleep.

That’s a nice metaphor for Couric and her ilk, come to think of it.

Bedbugs.


28 posted on 10/27/2010 7:48:11 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: WebFocus
Did she really use the term ‘unwashed’?

Could she possibly be so stupid she does not know it is a pejorative not unlike “little people”

29 posted on 10/27/2010 8:04:02 AM PDT by Mr. K (All our candidates suck! The media SAYS SO!!)
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To: WebFocus
I'm perky and cute - not a carefully crafted image.
30 posted on 10/27/2010 8:06:07 AM PDT by Dilbert56 (Harry Reid, D-Nev.: "We're going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war.")
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To: WebFocus

I don’t think most of us need any more ammunition to despise this woman. I’ve never forgiven her for years ago, literally SNEERING at Barbara Bush during an interview. Mrs. Bush remained poised and classy as usual.

As far as I’m concerned, Couric can just go get repeatedly colonoscoped.


31 posted on 10/27/2010 8:06:27 AM PDT by rhoda_penmark
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To: Texas Eagle

LOL!


32 posted on 10/27/2010 8:15:09 AM PDT by milagro
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To: Mr. K

RE: Did she really use the term ‘unwashed’?


Yes she did.

From : THE PHRASE FINDER

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-great-unwashed.html

Meaning

The common, lower classes; the hoi polloi.

Origin

This rather disparaging term was coined by the Victorian novelist and playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton. He used it in his 1830 novel Paul Clifford:

“He is certainly a man who bathes and ‘lives cleanly’, (two especial charges preferred against him by Messrs. the Great Unwashed).”


33 posted on 10/27/2010 8:22:36 AM PDT by WebFocus
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To: Dilbert56
COMPARE...


The unwashed Katie Couric


GARY OLDMAN as DRACULA
34 posted on 10/27/2010 8:25:42 AM PDT by WebFocus
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To: WebFocus
divine the mood of the midterms

The mood is indeed divine, God Bless America!

35 posted on 10/27/2010 8:26:31 AM PDT by TexasCajun
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To: WebFocus

oh my God!


36 posted on 10/27/2010 8:28:22 AM PDT by Hegewisch Dupa
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To: WebFocus

Send her out to work a few months with Mike Rowe on “Dirty Jobs”.

You will never know the pure joy of a hot shower and plenty of soap until you have gone without one for several days and are absolutely stinking filthy from engaging in hard, dirty work.

Bliss!


37 posted on 10/27/2010 8:30:26 AM PDT by BwanaNdege ("a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites" - Charles Krauthammer)
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To: MichaelCorleone
The best at showing "Middle America" and normal folks was Charles Kuralt on the old CBS Sunday morning show ...

Great stuff from a fine American ...


38 posted on 10/27/2010 8:37:23 AM PDT by BlueLancer (I'm getting a fine tootsy-frootsying right here...)
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To: WebFocus

Can you make that photo a little larger? I don’t think the cameltoe is visible enough. LOL !


39 posted on 10/27/2010 8:58:15 AM PDT by rhoda_penmark
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To: Mr. K

RE: Could she possibly be so stupid she does not know it is a pejorative not unlike “little people”

She knew. She thinks that the majority of us “unwashed” are uneducated enough to not know what she means. Like when CNN and MSNBC Reporters use TeaB@gger. They say it with a sly grin on their face, as if they are pulling one over on those not in the know.


40 posted on 10/27/2010 8:58:38 AM PDT by Portnoy (Follow me on Twitter @gadsdenrattlers)
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