nodded.
âSeriously.â
âIâm taking you seriously.â
I had planned to complain to McGravy about the sensational, gratuitous, and spurious story Jerry was making me do, but this didnât seem a propitious time to whine.
âBob, am I going to be affected in the reshuffle?â I asked. âIs that why I have to be on my best behavior?â
âI canât tell you that, Robin,â he said. âYou know I canât.â
âI am going to be affected, arenât I?â
âI canât tell you.â
âPlease donât let them send me to Nutrition News, Bob. Or take me off the air.â
âRobin, I canât discuss the content of our editorial meetings. Donât ask me again,â he said. âSo howâs life with Jerry? Are you behaving yourself?â
âIâm trying to behave myself, but Jerry gets worse every day. He goes out of his way to provoke meââ
âYeah. But the guy knows how to get ratings, thatâs for sure.â
McGravy said this with a kind of grudging respect for ratings Iâd never seen in him before. If anything, he had always disdained ratings, and felt that the networkâs mandate was the story first. For years, he had waged a one-man crusade against the tabloidization of broadcast news, a Sisyphean mission in the age of Amy, Tonya, and O.J. Although ANN was not nearly as tainted as some of the networks, it had fed at the trough too often and too noisily for McGravyâs tastes.
Special Reports was always the first hog at the trough. Yet, despite that, Jerryâs star was rising at ANN. While the rest of the network struggled for ratings and ad revenue, Special Reports was effortlessly generating huge piles of money for our fearless leader, Georgia Jack Jackson, who greatly appreciated this moneymaking. Jackson was fighting off a slow, persistent takeover attempt by televangelist Paul Mangecet and needed all the cash he could raise. The pressure was on.
âIt makes you wonder what weâll do for ratings,â McGravy said. âHow much is the media unconsciously manipulating events in order to get the best possible story? How are we influencing the outcome in order to grab viewers? To what depths will we lower ourselves to ensure our economic survival?â
I took that last rhetorical question rather personally, as I had done some pretty sleazy stories for Jerry and so knew a little about the depths to which one might stoop.
âThis is me youâre talking to, Bob,â I said. âThe woman who once posed as a sperm-bank customer. The woman who broke the exploding cheek-implant story. Who kept a straight face when a timid church secretary from Kansas told me sheâd been gang-banged by aliens who got her drunk aboard their spaceship.â
Things are apparently pretty much the same all over the universe.
âI know you didnât want to do those stories. I wasnât passing judgment on you.â
Wearily, Bob sighed and punched me lightly in the shoulder. He had bigger problems on his mind.
âAre you learning to roll with the punches a little bit, Robin?â
âIâm being a very good girl,â I said. âThanks for the Cab Calloway tape, by the way.â
âItâs a real pick-me-up in the morning, isnât it? âJumpinâ Jive, makes you nine foot tall when youâre four-foot-five,ââ he sang. He emptied his glass. âAlways cheers me up. I gotta go, Robin. Just remember, whatever happens, it could be a blessing in disguise.â
âWait! What does that mean? Is that some sort of ⦠warning?â
âRobin, nothingâs set in stone yet. Just remember, a blessing in disguise.â
Inspirational saying number 246: Itâs a blessing in disguise.
Naturally, this worried me. If it was already a done deal and they just werenât ready to tell me yet, then I wanted to know in time to, as Tamayo
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