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# Weekend Words: Anchor
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/weekend-words-anchor/
- Published: 2015-02-15T13:49:01.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:31:54.000Z
- Description: This week, two TV news anchors are going away.
- Author: Weekend Editors
- Tags: Opinion, Weekend, Weekend Words, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:08 (2014, 2015, part 2)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/02/anchor.jpg)

Andries van Eertvelt, “Two Ships at Anchor” (1640s), oil on canvas, 64 x 98 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg (image via Web Gallery of Art)

This week, two TV news anchors are going away.

> NBC anchor Brian Williams is a standup comic in disguise.  
>  
> **—Leonard Maltin**

> Oaths and anchors equally will drag: naught else abides on fickle earth but unkept promises of joy.  
>  
> **—Herman Melville, *The Enchanted Isles or the Encantadas***

> Family… the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.  
>  
> **—J. August Strindberg**

> The imaged Word, it is, that holds  
> Hushed willows anchored in its glow.  
> It is the unbetrayable reply  
> Whose accent no farewell can know.  
>  
> **—Hart Crane, “Voyages VI”**

> The primary function of myth is to validate an existing social order. Myth enshrines conservative social values, raising tradition on a pedestal. It expresses and confirms, rather than explains or questions, the sources of cultural attitudes and values. Because myth anchors the present in the past it is a sociological charter for a future society which is an exact replica of the present one.  
>  
> **—Ann Oakley (British sociologist and author)**

> It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.  
>  
> **—John Kenneth Galbraith**

> **Cleopatra:** Think on me,  
> That am with Phoebus’ amorous pinches black,  
> And wrinkled deep in time? Broad-fronted Caesar,  
> When thou wast here above the ground, I was  
> A morsel for a monarch: and great Pompey  
> Would stand and make his eyes grow in my brow;  
> There would he anchor his aspect and die  
> With looking on his life.  
>  
> **—Shakespeare, *Antony and Cleopatra***

> A good heavy book holds you down. It’s an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic.  
>  
> **—Roy Blount, Jr.**

> The world reacts very strangely to people they see on TV, and I can begin to understand how anchor monsters are made. If you’re not careful, you can become used to being treated as though you’re special and begin to expect it. For a reporter, that’s the kiss of death.  
>  
> **—Anderson Cooper**