Talk:David Brinkley

Biography assessment rating comment
WikiProject Biography Assessment

The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Yamara 20:24, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

The biography skipped the disastrous co-anchor assignment with Barbara Walters. (I don't know how to make that wiggly sign) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.35.46.16 (talk) 04:23, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Uh, maybe this devoted Brinkley follower ALSO, as does the Wiki bio, somehow completely spaced on this cited Brinkley/Walters teaming, as short-lived as it was...or just maybe the writer above was instead mis-remembering the short-lived circa-1976 pairing of Walters with another much-respected network news jumper, Harry Reasoner, then late of CBS--which CERTAINLY was widely-regarded by industry folk as disastrous? I'm admittedly just another idiot viewer, but I thought Babs and the longtime 60 Minutes stalwart worked just fine together, at least as measured against the pre-Brinkley (or at least pre-Roone Arledge adding the News Division to his longtime ABC Sports portfolio) ABC News standards, which of course in those days seldom if ever matched up with their consistently-superior competition on CBS and NBC. [signed] FLORIDA BRYAN

Discussion
While Brinkley was witty, he was hardly an entertainer. He was a journalist and reporter. His death should not be included with those of "entertainers who died in their 80's."

Why has nobody mentioned the Buffy reference yet?
 * Because it's completely trivial and hard to include in the article as it is. Zeppocity 15:59, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm quite certain that the closing music was not from the beginning of Beethoven's Ninth, but from the beginning of the Second Movement, with its distinctive "DUM dum, DUM dum, dum dum DUM dum" violin attack--it was so distinctive that my father, who directed the local news that followed Huntley-Brinkley on my home town's NBC affiliate for years, could hardly keep from saying "Stand by" every time I played the second movement. Honzie

It's the opening notes of the Second Movement of Beethoven's Ninth -- look it up on YouTube if you don't have access to a recording. (Subito Piano, June 5, 2011)

A whole day of Star Wars?
In 1977, Brinkley allegedly spent a entire day at a movie theatre (maybe the Loews Astor Plaza in Times Square, New York City) to watch the original 1977 Star Wars over and over again.

If a cite can be found for this event, it could be added to the trivia section.

Fair use rationale for Image:Davidbrinkley071669.jpg
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BetacommandBot 11:18, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Christie?
Should the fact that he's Christie Brinkley's father be mentioned? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:07, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

What in the world does this paragraph mean?
I just read the following text (pasted verbatim from the current version of the David Brinkley page) and I'm totally baffled:

Another example of Brinkley's seething wryness was evinced on the third night of Chicago's infamous Democratic Convention of 1968. After continuous abuses made on the floor of the convention of NBC correspondents – namely, interference and shadowing of the media staff by supporters of Hubert Humphrey, presumably with connections to political boss Richard J. Daley – voiced a protest of Daley's behavior and his alleged interference with freedoms of the press following Senator Abraham Ribicoff's stormy nomination of George McGovern. Perhaps in reply to a control room for objectivity, referencing Daley's refusal to be interviewed by John Chancellor earlier in the evening, Brinkley can be heard over the McGovern demonstration to have scolded "Mayor Daley had his chance!"[4]

Can anyone translate this into English? Thuvan Dihn (talk) 20:55, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

THANK YOU Thuvan Dihn! I might do it myself but I am unfamiliar with the event and the wording is unintelligible. Somebody help here -- or should we just remove the paragraph entirely? It serves only to detract from the article. (Subito Piano, 6/5/2011)

Did he call Clinton a bore or a boor?
I know it was widely reported in the media at the time that on election night of 1996, Brinkley called President Cliton a "bore" (i.e., a dull person) but I have always believed that he said and meant to say "boor" (meaning an uncultured person). In context, it makes a lot more sense to me. Is there any evidence on which word Brinkley intended? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.86.139.118 (talk) 06:31, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

That is a simply brilliant point! As a lifelong Brinkley fan--who once managed to watch him in awe at close range whilst he worked up in the NBC booth with Chancellor at the 1976 GOP convention in Kansas City (yet nonetheless couldn't finagle my way into meeting him during a network break, despite being mere yards distant for over a quarter-hour) and even visited his Wilmington gravesite on my drive home from the Trump inauguration--I have OFTEN thought of that sad postscript to his otherwise matchless career, yet never have ONCE considered the possibility of what you apparently instantly realized. Yep, "boor" may be a word few of the semi-literate use anymore, but Brinkley was perhaps the most elegant writer in network news this side of St. Sevareid, and as such, yes, it makes WAY more sense that that was in fact the word he employed that moment, rather than its decidedly more-pedestrian homophone, "bore". Thanks ever so much for this--which as far as I'm concerned is a total repudiation of those who criticized him about this, for in various ways Clinton INDEED stewarded a boorish administration! [signed] FLORIDA BRYAN

David Brinkley & Christie Brinkley's Father
David Brinkley was NOT Christie Brinkley's father. His sons with his first wife are Alan, Joel, and John. He had a step-daughter, Alexis, through his second wife. MacLennan123Maclennan123 (talk) 01:21, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

What in the world does this paragraph mean?
If your computer has the command "Simple English," try translating the paragraph in question into that category. MacLennan123Maclennan123 (talk) 01:27, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

NPOV
In the following sentence, the adjective "unhappy" does not reflect a neutral point of view: "An unhappy Brinkley left NBC in 1981." MacLennan123Maclennan123 (talk) 21:40, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

External links modified
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Would including this unusual Brinkley habit tarnish his image in the eyes of most viewers?
I first noticed this certain Brinkley quirk back in the mid-'80s, when I pretty much never missed viewing AND taping an edition of "This Week with David Brinkley" after its 1981 premier, being not only a serious Brinkley partisan since the early '60s but also a great admirer of the ever-erudite George Will. Yet it never caught my attention until about 1985. But after seeing it once, I then started looking for it EVERY Sunday morning, and sure enough, would often find a camera catching him doing it, though hardly in every edition of that elegant--and much copied--broadcast.

And then just yesterday I was watching on YouTube the NBC coverage of that long election overnight when it wasn't clear JFK had defeated Veep Milhous until daylight Wednesday morn, and I was surprised--though I guess I shouldn't have been--to see Brinkley doing it in 1960 whilst talking with Chet Huntley about this or that!

So just what was this habit? David Brinkley seems to have been an inveterate thumb-twiddler! Now mind you, in the election night coverage, this wasn't while Huntley was talking, thus implying that Chet's longtime partner was bored; rather, this was SIMULTANEOUS with Brinkley's OWN philosophizing, suggesting (to me, at least) that perhaps it was something which somehow helped him formulate his always thoughtful and often witty sentences.

(As a longtime commercial newstalk radio host on the airwaves of numerous Lower 48 cities 1989-2013, I found that I ALWAYS could think more readily while standing, and thus sat down while on-air only a handful of times over my career--at a couple stations where the cramped studio situation made it impossible or at least uncomfortable for a 5'11" broadcaster to stand, or in one case simply due to a leg injury.)

And just like back in 1960, on his ABC broadcast during the '80s, Brinkley wouldn't twiddle while others were talking--although that was hard to accurately gauge, inasmuch as the camera in those situations was usually on the speaker--as much as while he had the floor himself. And if standing rather than sitting makes my meager mind work better, I can certainly imagine that those circling thumbs somehow helped propel Brinkley's always-apropos analyses. And the fact that he was doing it back in 1960 and then through the '80s suggests it was probably a lifelong habit.

But the question I proffered in the headline remains: would including this in the text--under the "Trivia" rubric, I suppose, although I've ALWAYS resented that word on the simple principle that factual knowledge is never trivial but rather worth knowing--make casual Wikipedia readers erroneously think Brinkley was something of a phony who was secretly bored by his rarefied gig, or would they instead react to it the way I have, i.e., an interesting and amusing but hardly denigrating quirk of a serious and towering figure in broadcast journalism? Thanks in advance for your input! [signed] FLORIDA BRYAN