Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Yes, Katie Couric has had an accomplished career, as entertainer and in tv journalism. This book makes clear she is far more an entertainer than she is a journalist. In this memoir, what she cares most about in life are the things of entertainment--money, celebrity, and standing out in a crowd, especially a crowd of VIPs. She's certainly a savvy self-promoter and competent as a tv newsperson (the Sarah Palin moment showed the rewards from persistent questioning that we always need more of.) But she doesn't come across as actually "smart", because--for all the opportunities she's had, she regards it all so trivially. Has she learned anything meaningful from her apparently rich experiences? It doesn't seem so from "Going There" which she says expresses her real self. She was, from the beginning, well suited to television: cute, and an extrovert with a great smile. Yes, she succeeded in a male-dominated field, but she seems to have played the game to do it. She has an off-putting double standard for men and women. She seems loath to criticize bad behavior in famous men, giving sort of a wink or a shrug to much of it in those she mentions (Sam Donaldson, Larry King, even Matt Lauer. Dinner with Jeffrey Epstein doesn't mean much other than to archly note how her boyfriend pointed out "how young" the women were. And how young were they? She doesn't say, or seem upset by being even tangentially part of his world.) Most people who knew her from the Today Show remember how mean she was to Ann Curry who, by comparison to Couric, always seemed genuine. I never understood it--Curry, professional, beautiful, reserved--seemed no threat to Katie's dominance on "Today". But in this memoir, you can see she's just kind of mean to other women. It's no wonder that one of the young women Lauer abused told Curry (who reported it), but didn't tell Couric. What woman would trust Katie with something like that? Here, she seems to criticize Lauer just as much as she has to, while often blaming his victims for not being as strong and assertive as Katie is. She publishes her emails to Lauer--and his to her. Also shares private emails to her from others, also apparently without their permission. Another Mean Girl move.) She's still mean to Curry here, repeating a "joke" Katie made at a Lauer roast even though she knew it hurt and humiliated Curry then. So let's do it again, for all time, in a book. (It was, btw, crude and unfunny even then.) She was hostile when Ashleigh Banfield got hired because Banfield was smart, pretty, and younger than Katie. She gets in digs at Deborah Norville, whom she permanently replaced when Norville went on maternity leave, for supposedly being unrelatable to viewers because of being so perfect. (It sounds like a compliment here. From Katie, it's not.) She snits about Martha Stewart not having a sense of humor until she went to prison. And on it goes. She doesn't mentor anyone because what if they're better than she is? Even at CBS News, making top dollar at $15 mill a year, she has to still be the mean girl, head of the pack. She even felt threatened when her husband, a lawyer, became a legal analyst on television. "He should stay in his lane," she thought. (Yes, she eventually tuned in to his illness and suggests she blames herself. But is it a pose or real remorse? With Katie, she discloses a lot of unflattering things, but her real feelings about them are hard to tell. And, yes, she's done good work to educate people about colorectal cancer and screenings. She does charitable cancer work. That's commendable, but also benefits her public image, which seems never far from her mind. Too harsh? Maybe. Maybe not. What really put me off wasn't all her digs at other famous women. It was the way she took out after her daughter's nanny. She used a different name, but the real name is out now as the woman felt she needed to defend herself. Couric wrote such insulting descriptions of her (a woman who was basically "co-parenting" with her for three years, but who Couric concludes had developed an "unhealthy" role in the household, "making" Couric abnormally dependent on her.) It's all kind of weird, unflattering to both, but particularly to the nanny who, in interviews, has said much of it wasn't true, and has supplied her own unflattering descriptions of Katie. Be that as it may, the nanny isn't a public figure with a best-selling book that millions will read and believe. It's a vintage mean girl move from Couric, but not surprising. As she often comes across here, Couric's self-centered, competitive, intellectually shallow, vain, petty and really -not- much of a "sweetheart".