Harry Shearer isn’t just a comedic actor — having appeared in many of Christopher Guest’s movies, as well as playing bassist Derek Smalls in Spinal Tap — but is also a blogger at The Huffington Post, and appears on other sites as well. One of the places he posts things is on My Damn Channel, a video site similar in many ways to Will Farrell’s FunnyorDie.com, and one of his recent “found items” was a video clip of CBS News anchor Katie Couric during her off-air moments at the primaries in New Hampshire.
There’s not much in the clip really, apart from Couric fiddling with her mike, making fun of herself for getting nervous — “I say oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” she laughs — and talking about how bad she looks on one of the monitors. She talks about how John McCain’s wife has eyes that are a piercing light blue colour, and jokes that she probably thought Couric was weird. She makes fun of her husky voice, and complains about the quality of the mikes, and some other miscellaneous banter.
The thing I find really interesting is the comments that the video clip has gotten, not just on My Damn Channel’s site, but on other sites as well. There have to be close to 300 comments on the My Damn Channel site alone, and they are a fascinating mix. On one end of the spectrum, there are lots of “Boy, is she dumb for not knowing more about the candidates — look what idiots the media are” remarks, but at the other end there are lots of comments about how the outtakes actually make her seem a lot more warm and human than many people seemed to think she was.
Plenty of people seem to feel that the video clip could hurt Couric, who is fighting low ratings for her news show, because it makes her look ditzy or uninformed. But just as many or more say they may actually watch her now because she seems a lot more human. Fascinating.
