April 08, 2005
ALL ABOOT PETER
I especially enjoyed this passage by New York Times writer Alessandra Stanley, who in the process of covering the announcement by Peter Jennings this week that he has lung cancer, was able to deftly dissect the events around him and put his talent in perspective:
Mostly, what will be missing while Mr. Jennings undergoes treatment is his uniquely dry delivery: on the air, he is tart, sometimes supercilious, but always smooth, calm and, most of all, never mawkish. His aplomb was especially missed in Rome this weekend; normally crisp anchors somehow lost their bearing covering the death of John Paul II: the desire to match the solemnity of the moment and the mood of mourners brought out some of the most cloying prose in television history. Mr. Williams and CNN's Aaron Brown began sounding more Catholic than the cardinals, and Diane Sawyer went into the kind of transports usually associated with St. Teresa of Ávila. (One exception was Larry King, who on Sunday asked Jim Caviezel, the actor who played Jesus in "The Passion of the Christ," to assess the pope's chances of making it to heaven. "Jim, you think he's with Jesus now?" Mr. King wondered. "We only have 30 seconds.")
Comments