What up Dog Days of August

It's the end of an era, Peter Jennings has died. An era of a network anchorman whining about the lack of nationalized health care in the United States every frickin day has come to a close. The end of the forever young pretty boy on the network. When a pathetic ABC network decided that they didn't have the skills to garner an audience they selected a high school drop-out from Canada with a great haircut to anchor their nightly news. When that didn't work they sent him on assignment and replaced him over the years with a variety of pompous and self righteous doofi. Finally after all the miserable talking heads had died, literally, they deemed that he had become pompous enough to resume the job as the face and haircut of World News Tonight, much to the dismay of Ted Koppel, who remembers him as a close friend and colleague, now that he's dead. Secretly Ted is kicking himself for not dying first. Damn that Jennings!

I met Jennings once at a convention where he was signing news memorabilia. I purchased a pair of Saddam Hussein's white underpants and paid my 50 dollars to have him autograph them. He threw them back in my face and told me to go to Dan Rather's table, and he continued on signing the Bill Clinton sex cigars. Honestly he apologized later when we met in the smoking room. He took a drag on some cigarette he pulled from a strange Canadian pack with the picture of a sailor on the front. He squinted as he inhaled and said "Damn that 911!" I asked him if he ever considered quitting smoking and he laughed that raspy dry smokers laugh. He said "Did the Americans give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"

So now the search begins for a suitable replacement. This is going to be hard so soon after electing a new Pope. Rumor has it the Cronkite has already began doing posters in his rec room, and Ted Koppel has been to Great Clips 3 times this week. In my opinion this is at last the opportunity for the networks to do the right thing; cancel the news and put on cartoons again. That's why everyone tunes in at that time anyway. They want to see if Rocky and Bullwinkle are back. XXXXXI