The crowd was egging me on, doing flaming shots along with me. So rather than stop at two, I stopped counting.
My head was spinning like a mirror ball. Brooks and I made our way to the dance floor, where, after a few clumsy moves, I collapsed like a sack of potatoes. In a scene out of Weekend at Bernie’s, Brooks helped me to the door, kept me from wiping out on the snowy sidewalk, and somehow got me to Lenox Hill Hospital, where he told the staff I needed help…and privacy.
I recall a stretcher, an IV, violent puking, Brooks snoozing in the chair next to me. When I wasn’t retching, I was obsessing over the possibility that someone at the hospital might tip off the tabloids. I could just see the headlines: Anchor Hits Rock Bottom! Lady Took Some Liberties! Blotto Katie Blacks Out! By the grace of God, the whole thing stayed under the radar.
Turns out I hadn’t heard the last of the party trick that damn near killed me. A few years later on Jeopardy!, Alex Trebek asked one of the contestants to share a fun story about herself.
Her response: “I once did a flaming Statue of Liberty at a bar with Katie Couric!”
I’ll take “Embarrassing Moments” for $2,000, Alex.
IT WAS BAD enough that people were openly talking smack—Dan Rather told Joe Scarborough that I was “dumbing down and tarting up” the news. Almost worse was the internal sabotage.
One night after the broadcast, Rome grabbed a handful of people for a quick meeting in his office and shut the door behind him. He told them they had to cut back on taped pieces, like my in-depth interviews, because they cost too much, and they weren’t resonating with viewers. Apparently they weren’t resonating with CBS correspondents either, since those pieces ate into their airtime.
“Do it gradually,” Rome told them, “and keep it to yourselves.”
Everyone understood.
The next morning, there was a story about it in USA Today.
The situation was unwinnable—we were trying to bring change to a place that didn’t want to change. We’d thought we’d be greeted as liberators; instead, we got an insurgency.
Bob had been trying to streamline the production of the broadcast, working closely with editors and tech folks. One afternoon, he entered his office and discovered a typewritten message that had been slipped under the door. It had the anonymous, herky-jerky look of a ransom note. It said:
Let me tell you that you’re a fucking asshole…There’s a line of people who would love to kick your ass.
Jesus.
65
The Wisdom of Samantha
PEOPLE SAY THE darnedest things. Once while I was on vacation, a woman approached me excitedly.
“When you started on the evening news,” she said, “I picked up my daughter from school. She even skipped soccer practice so we could be home to watch your first evening newscast. I told her, ‘This is such an important moment for women.’”
I was so moved—it was exactly the message I was trying to send.
Then: “After that night, we never watched you again.”
One Saturday afternoon, on my way to Central Park with Maisy, a middle-aged woman in a sweat suit came toward me. “Are you Katie Couric?” she asked.
“Yes,” I told her, happy to see a friendly face.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t care what anybody says, I like watching you on the evening news.”
When I reached the reservoir, I called Alan Berger. I finally lost it, crying so hard I practically hyperventilated, and I didn’t even care how many fit and happy runners on the bridle path saw me.
“Why is this happening?” I sobbed into the phone. “I just don’t understand it. I’m doing the best I can.”
Alan just listened.
At home I tried to keep things as normal as possible and not let the girls see me down. I wasn’t always successful. Over dinner one night, as Carrie stuck pieces of roast chicken in her mashed potatoes, I started weeping.
“Mom, what’s wrong?” Ellie said, alarmed.
“I’m sorry, guys,” I said, blowing my nose in my napkin. “I’m having a tough time at work. I’m getting trashed left and right. It’s just really, really hard to deal with, day after day.”
Carrie piped up: “Mom, remember what Samantha said?” And then, in a spot-on Kim Cattrall, “If I worried what every bitch in New York said about me, I’d never leave the house.”
I burst out laughing. It was just the right thing to snap me out of my funk. Then I began to seriously question my parenting if my fifth-grader could effortlessly quote a line from Sex and the City.