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I know that one is not supposed to speak ill of the dead. I should note, however, that in my dear departed mother's company, you would not hear the actual name of Margaret Thatcher mentioned. She was simply That Dreadful Woman. Obituaries for the grocer's-daughter-turned-Iron-Lady, dead of a stroke at age 87, made her the Story of the Day and the lead on NBC. By contrast, CBS chose the violent death, by carbomb, of Anne Smedinghoff, a 25-year-old foreign service officer on a mission to distribute school supplies in Afghanistan. ABC, with substitute anchor George Stephanopoulos, kicked off with President Barack Obama's mobilization for gun control legislation.

The obits for the first female Prime Minister of Britain included the passing pleasure of seeing clips from then-glass-ceiling-breaking interviews by female White House correspondents: CBS' Lesley Stahl in Mark Phillips' report filed from London; and NBC's Andrea Mitchell quoting her younger self. Mitchell also did what she does, using her lunchtime MSNBC Reports show as a soundbitegathering device for her later nightly package: this time Nancy Reagan and James Baker were included. There was no reason for Mitchell also to shoehorn a fictionalized clip of Meryl Streep's interpretation from The Iron Lady: surely it was the real-life woman who made the movie worthy of mention, not the movie that adds heft to the obituary. ABC's obit was filed by Nightline anchor Terry Moran.

La Handbag had to share the obituary slot with Annette Funicello, the Mousketeteer-turned-movie-beachpartygoer. NBC's Anne Thompson and Cecilia Vega, of Disney-owned ABC, filed full packages, while CBS anchor Scott Pelley mentioned Funicello's death of multiple sclerosis, at age 70, in passing. ABC's Vega ran a false-naïve clip from 1992 of Funicello asking herself rhetorically Why Me? Why had she become such a star in Walt Disney's afternoon television blockbuster? There must have been babyboomers all over the country shouting out loud at their TV sets with the obvious answer.

The breasts.
Andrew Tyndall 4/9/13 9:04:01 pm

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