Did you catch the Diane Sawyer-Ashley Dupre act on “20/20” Friday night?
It still boggles my mind that Sawyer is considered a “journalist” by ABC News after the Michael Jackson-Lisa Marie Presley debacle of a decade ago and the Elian Gonzalez shaming in 2000, but there she was two nights ago looking suitably “shocked” and “compassionate” as the Eliot Spitzer call girl told her tales of woe.
The ex-beauty pageant contestant and loyal secretary to President Richard Nixon — Diane followed Nixon back to San Clemente after he resigned in disgrace in 1974 — is a better actress than many of the stars her husband Mike Nichols has guided to Oscar nominations over the past 40 years.
Whether it is looking sympathetic sitting across from the Jackson-Presley trainwreck marriage or getting down and playing on the floor with little Elian, Sawyer has always seemed to be auditioning for the sob sister newspaper-woman role in “Chicago.” She makes Barbara Walters look like Helen Thomas.
Years ago in the musical “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” there was a hilarious number sung by a mock-outraged Houston TV reporter — “Texas Has a Whorehouse In It!” — and I recalled that tune as Sawyer kept working up a new look of surprise and moral superiority every time Dupre explained that there are lots of men in this country who pay young women to have sex with them (No!)
Way back in the early 1980s I used to enjoy Sawyer on the CBS version of “The Today Show” where she handled light features and co-host banter with considerable charm, but as she has risen up the ladder into harder news slots, Sawyer’s reliance on pseudo emotionalism and ignorant moralism has become increasingly repellant.
Fighting with colleague Barbara Walters for each new ABC newsmagazine “get” — and making who-knows-what sort of deals with her scandal-sheet prey — the newswoman is an embarrassment to her profession.
