The Man from ABC
As I'm sure you've already heard, longtime ABC News anchor Peter Jennings died yesterday of lung cancer.
He was 67. Which is a lot younger than it used to seem.
Peter Jennings always struck me as the epitome of what James Bond would be like if he had decided to become a television news anchor instead of a secret agent. Jennings always exuded the same sort of cool detachment as Ian Fleming's original vision of Bond: aloof, humorless, unflappable. You were glad he was at the big desk when cataclysmic events happened somewhere in the world. You didn't get the sense that he'd be much fun at a dinner party, but that wasn't his job.
I'll bet that, toward the end, he wished he hadn't gone back to the cigarette habit during the stress-laden days following September 11, 2001.
He was 67. Which is a lot younger than it used to seem.
Peter Jennings always struck me as the epitome of what James Bond would be like if he had decided to become a television news anchor instead of a secret agent. Jennings always exuded the same sort of cool detachment as Ian Fleming's original vision of Bond: aloof, humorless, unflappable. You were glad he was at the big desk when cataclysmic events happened somewhere in the world. You didn't get the sense that he'd be much fun at a dinner party, but that wasn't his job.
I'll bet that, toward the end, he wished he hadn't gone back to the cigarette habit during the stress-laden days following September 11, 2001.
SwanShadow was randomly pounding the keyboard at 5:23 PM
2 insisted on sticking two cents in:
I was watching TV today and someone said the same thing - that Peter Jennings was network news' answer to James Bond. Maybe they just read your blog??
Independently, I said the James Bond thing, too, out loud last night while watching Nightline, though to my knowledge I'd never heard it said before.
Great minds think alike.
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