Lazy Susan
KIRO Colleagues Had Plenty of Nicknames for Susan Hutchison Before She Ran for King County Executive—None of Them Good
Tools
One evening in the mid-1980s, back when Susan Hutchison was still an anchor at KIRO-TV, a news producer who hadn't finished writing the last two sentences of an evening news teaser decided to put in some placeholder text.
Instead of writing something like "Two Chihuahuas roasted in a house fire, film at 11!" the producer, Peggy Mapes, wrote: "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." According to several people who worked for KIRO at the time, Mapes later updated the text with the correct script—but someone forgot to update Hutchison's teleprompter.
Stranger Personals
"Susan didn't proofread the tease beforehand," said Kelly Guenther, an intern at KIRO in the '80s who went on to work at KING 5 Television. The story of what happened next is famous among KIRO staff. "She reads it cold," Guenther said, "and actually says, on air, 'Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.'"
Guenther continued: "Apparently Susan doesn't realize the gaffe, nor apparently was it ever recorded. But few have ever forgotten that it occurred." Other anchors would have ad-libbed the rest—realizing the text was all wrong—but Hutchison was infamous at KIRO for being capable of nothing more than reciting the words on her teleprompter.
"Maybe it was an unfortunate case that her brain was turned off and she didn't catch it," said Natalia Dotto, a former producer at KIRO television who has heard the story and started about the time that Hutchison left the station. But, added Guenther: "In the six or seven different newsrooms I've worked in, there really was a sense of this anchor at KIRO not being the sharpest tool in the shed."
This sentiment was echoed by a half-dozen former KIRO employees contacted by The Stranger. Each one of them remembers Hutchison, who is now running for King County executive, as a dim bulb who was unfamiliar with current events and was considered unqualified to report in the field or handle a serious interview. Because of this, they said, she earned the nicknames "airhead" and "bubblehead," and had a reputation as a "dilettante news reader."
"There were anchors known as journalists, and Susan wasn't," said Lauri Hennessey, an editor at KIRO radio from 1983 to 1989. By comparison, anchors on competing stations in the same years—Kathi Goertzen at KOMO and, in particular, Jean Enersen at KING—were revered as bona fide journalists with a tight grasp on the issues.
Hutchison was KIRO's lead evening news anchor from 1983 to 2002. It was plenty of time to generate the name recognition that has helped her in her race against Democrat Dow Constantine, but it was also plenty of time to generate a collection of amusing stories that now leave her former coworkers aghast at the idea that Hutchison could potentially wind up in the most powerful job in the King County government.
"My friends who worked at KIRO—none of us ever had any problems with her, but we never expected her to be running the county," Hennessey says. "This is a very tough job that deserves a very smart person. I never, ever, ever, ever would guess that she would be in that position. I never saw the intellectual depth in Susan Hutchison that I would expect in a King County executive."
Among the incidents that have become legend in the KIRO newsroom is the tale of the vanishing telephone. Richard Pauli, a television-news photographer for seven years at KIRO, recalled that the phone in the makeup room kept on disappearing, and "finally someone spray-painted it yellow and green, and made it really ugly" in order to discourage its theft.
"Susan looked at the telephone," Pauli recalled, "and said, 'This is an ugly phone—let's get rid of it.'" When a crew member explained to her that the phone was painted yellow and green to dissuade people from stealing it, Hutchison is said to have asked, "Who would want that number?"
In another story told around KIRO, Hutchison saw an image on one of the monitors of an employee lying on a couch on the studio set. But it was a freeze-frame taken earlier, and the man had since gotten up. "She had a confused look on her face, walked up to the couch, and looked behind it," Pauli said, recounting the tale as it was told to him by people who he said had witnessed the event. "Her reality was so attached to what was on the monitor that she could not accept that reality was somehow different."
Hutchison also earned the nickname "Lazy Susan."
As this story goes, Hutchison told a producer trying to rotate a television set that he needed a lazy Susan—a platform that swivels—and then someone in the newsroom said, "We've already got one of those."
In addition to all the employee lore, there are also court records that show that Hutchison created some bad blood at KIRO and was thought to have a questionable work ethic. She sued the station in 2003 for what she claimed was age and race discrimination after KIRO hired Kristy Lee—a younger, Asian woman—to take her place, according to papers filed with King County Superior Court. Hutchison alleged she had been "replaced in part because she is older and Caucasian."
When Hutchison discovered that Lee received time off over the Fourth of July holiday in 2002—time Hutchison had tried to take off herself—she called in sick, according to the court records. But she apparently wasn't sick. "I heard that another KIRO employee had seen Hutchison canoeing in the Bend, Oregon, area on those so-called sick days," KIRO former general manager John Woodin said, according to the court record. On July 25, the station suspended Hutchison for five days. Following the canoeing incident, a demotion, and a drop in ratings, Hutchison left the station.
On the campaign trail, Hutchison has repeatedly cited her tenure at KIRO as evidence of a strong résumé. But the half-dozen former colleagues who spoke to The Stranger, while all saying they intended no ill will toward Hutchison, were adamant about her lack of intellectual depth. They said they felt compelled to speak out now that she is running for King County executive. "I used to mock her as crazy and stupid, and now she makes me afraid," says Pauli. "She has schooled herself, and she has morphed into an ideologue."
One former KIRO broadcaster who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity was concerned that the public won't get the full story about Hutchison because people in television news are not used to being on the other side of the microphone. This broadcaster said: "You have to question her ability to run a government as complex as King County when she needs a cue card to speak."
UPDATE: Susan Hutchison's campaign manager, Jordan McCarren, emails, saying, "I have worked closely with Susan every single day for nearly six months. She is tremendously intelligent, capable, dedicated, impressively hard-working and possesses remarkable management skills."
This article has been updated since its original publication.
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Did she have cue cards when she kicking Dow's ass in the recent debates?
Everyone has low level jealous employee shit-talkers in their past.
Did you interview child cancer patients at Children's Hospital for this article to get the whole picture?
This shit is worse than Glenn Beck. Seriously, Rush Limbaugh journalism.
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That's a solid source you got there, ace.
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The not-so subtle misogynist undertones of this article are disgusting.
Vote for Hutchison. Visit her website.
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more, please.
(I heard there's a city council candidate they used to call "The Human Ashtray" in college)
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more, please.
(I heard there's a city council candidate they used to call "The Human Ashtray" in college)
I trust you aren't watching FOX NEWS -- because this article is about the same grade of journalism seen on that loathsome excuse for news.
Go away hutchheads!
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As dogcatcher.
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If you want to take Hutchison down, check out the mailer that Dow Constantine's campaign just sent out. It's a simple checklist of issues showing that he's got what it takes to lead King County and she doesn't. On the back it's got a list of women who endorse Dow and a quote and picture by a woman. It's clearly aimed at suburban women voters and it succeeds by simply telling the truth. If anyone's undecided and sees that, it will work.
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This is right on! Susan Hutchinson is being dishonest with voters about her radical religious views.
Why do Susan's radical religious views matter in this election? Because she served for ten years on the board of the Discovery Institute, which...
-- teaches against evolution and lobbies for so-called 'Intelligent Design' (code word for Creationism) to be taught in public schools. (The Discovery Institute tries to claim it doesn't actually support this, while at the same time it urges states to add religious-based 'Intelligent Design' to school curriculums.)
-- Federal courts have repeatedly ruled against the Discovery Institute in its promotion of religious teachings in schools:
"Its 'Teach the Controversy' campaign aims to teach creationist anti-evolution beliefs in United States public high school science courses. A federal court, along with the majority of scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, say the Institute has manufactured the controversy they want to teach by promoting a false perception that evolution is 'a theory in crisis', through incorrectly claiming that it is the subject of wide controversy and debate within the scientific community.
In 2005, a federal court ruled that the Discovery Institute pursues 'demonstrably religious, cultural, and legal missions', and the institute's manifesto, the Wedge strategy, describes a religious goal: to 'reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions'."
--the above quote is from Wikipedia.
We don't need a radical rigid religious idealogue like Susan Hutchinson promoting such nutty ideas for King County & its schools.
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how's ass aidz taste, mr. reporter?
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Just the fact that a local television newsanchor is running for public office is enough to make me not vote for them. It's still just all "cat in tree, film at 11" shit, with few exceptions.
Dominic makes ECB look like Bob Woodward.
(And I voted for Constantine.)
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That is all you need to know to determine she is a complete idiot.
"Douchebag Dominic loves to sniff panties and write about it."
Dude, why don't you write about your love of horses...
I have been a fan and while I'm not surprised by this empty attempt to sway those in your audience, I am disappointed. Your article of pure heresy would only be relevant if I couldn't think for myself. Really though, how many of those people actually vote? Your belief that we are all your sheep has you slipping. The libertarian view point is emerging. I want the government out of my bedroom and out of my purse. We need some production in this town, not just night life.
Sincerely,
Voting For Jobs From Now On
I'm not sure why her job performance in a position she held for so long shouldn't be scrutinized.
Our comments do have credibility.
But, she is thick enough, and devious enough, to be dangerous.
Sound familiar? Suzy is a blond Palin, with a tiny iota higher ability
to form a sentence. DO NOT VOTE FOR SARAH IN SEATTLE.
The anecdotes quoted in the article are all true, and there are a thousand more from a thousand different former co-workers, including some (from the male perspective) of a harassing nature.
Now, her co-anchor Steve Raible is in another league - intelligent and very hard working and sincere. Kathy Goertzen is not in the same universe - smart, hard-working, and one of the nicest people you'd ever have the pleasure of meeting. Hutchison coasted in from Hawaii and a boner from the former CEO, and has been taking a free ride since. Don't let her take King Co away from reason, science, and thought. Dow ain't Suzy.
just keep throwing it at something, it's bound to stick eventually, right?
Just keep throwing it up as an alleged rationale, as opposed to real, credible accounts describing a person who aspired to run the 14th largest county in the country, where 1/3 of all Washingtonians live, (in other words, not an espresso stand), and it's bound to stick eventually, right?
Were the reservations that a vast majority of the sane citizens of the United States had/have about Sarah Palin "mysogyny"? Are you kidding?
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