From IMDB, we are reminded that the script from the movie about Patton, ran something like this:
Patton: What’s the matter with you?
Soldier Who Gets Slapped: Well, I… I guess I… I can’t take it anymore.
Patton: What did you say?
Soldier Who Gets Slapped: It’s my nerves, sir. I… I just can’t stand the shelling anymore.
Patton: Your *nerves*? Well, hell, you’re nothing but a God-damned coward.
[Soldier start sniveling]
Patton: Shut up!
[Slaps him, once forehanded, then backhanded on the rebound]
Patton: I’m not going to have a man sitting here *crying*! In front of these brave men who have been wounded in battle!
[Soldier snivels some more, and Patton swings a vicious forehand slap, knocking his helmet away]
Patton: *Shut up!*
[to the doctors]
Patton: Don’t admit this yellow bastard. There’s nothing wrong with him. I won’t have a man who’s just afraid to fight *stinking up this place of honor!* You will get him back up to the front.
[to soldier]
Patton: You’re going back to the front, boy. You may get shot, and you may get killed, but you’re going back to the fighting. Either that, or I’ll stand you up before a firing squad. Why, I ought to shoot you right now, you…
[pulls his service automatic. At that, the doctors leap forward and hustle the soldier out of the tent. Patton keeps shouting at the soldier’s back]
Patton: God-damned bastard! Get him out of here! Take him back to the *front! You hear me? You God-damned coward!*
[Takes deep breath]
Patton: I won’t have cowards in my army.
Hmmmm. I guess we now have a working basis for a script in the forthcoming movie about Katie Couric and the failure of CBS news:
CBS EVENING NEWS anchor Katie Couric is being accused of slapping an editor — after he injected a word she detested into a script!
“The stress has caused her to blow up at her staff for small infractions on the set,” charges NEW YORK magazine reporter Joe Hagan, in a story set for publication on Monday.
“During the tuberculosis story in June, Couric got angry with news editor Jerry Cipriano for using a word she detested— ‘sputum’ —and the staff grew tense when she began slapping him ‘over and over and over again’ on the arm, according to a source familiar with the scene. It had seemed like a joke at first, but it quickly became clear that she wasn’t kidding.”
A top CBS executive tells the DRUDGE REPORT that no formal complaint has been filed against Couric over the incident.
So reports Drudge, [1] tonight.
I’ve been on the other side of that microphone. I know full well what operating under pressure means in those kind of circumstances. Some people deal with such stress is very well indeed. Others don’t.
However, there are a couple of things that can be gleaned from this;
- There is apparently a good deal of stress within the newsroom as regards the lack of performance of CBS news, of late
- Katie Couric is apparently feeling the stress very deeply
- She’s not dealing with the stress well, at all
Now, if we can just get Cox and Forkum to draw the Perky one with a perky Swastika on her boot, we’d be all set.