jennings, originally uploaded by willisgirl.

Long time ABC News anchorman Peter Jennings passed away yesterday. Despite being Canadian he was my all time favourite anchor. I admired him because he had this air of sophisticated coolness about him. It was like watching a royal prince deliver the news.

I was not aware of his passing until they said something about it today on the Big O and Dukes show which is soon to be called The Ed Norris Show with Big O and Dukes Show. As everyone knows Jennings died of lung cancer. I wasn’t too surprised when his lung cancer diagnosis was revealed.

I recall being horrified when I saw a candid interview he did a decade or two ago. In this interview they showed footage of him going through his day to day activities as a network anchor. In almost every scene they showed he seemed to have a cigarette in his hand smoking.

As a kid after seeing this I was thoroughly horrified with the knowledge that my favorite network anchor was a smoker! As a kid you naturally assume that the people you admire live clean healthy lives devoid of vice. For a while I couldn’t bring myself to watch his newscasts because I felt let down. Yes, I turned to the dark side and watched Tom Brokaw mispronounce words on NBC News. Eventually I grew up and realized that Peter Jennings was human and like all humans he wasn’t perfect. I will greatly miss seeing Jennings on the magic box called TV.