Love Quote by Diane Sawyer

There is something deliciously journalist-brained about Diane Sawyer praising American Idol while already writing its obituary. “American Idol, I love” opens with disarming candor: not the dutiful “it’s interesting,” but full-throated affection from a figure associated with seriousness, gatekeeping, and the old prestige-media order. That first clause matters because it grants permission. If Diane Sawyer can enjoy it, the audience at home can stop apologizing for liking it.

Then she pivots to the controlling frame: “a passing fancy.” That phrase is a velvet-rope dismissal, a way of keeping pop culture in its place. The subtext is generational and institutional. Here’s a broadcast-news authority acknowledging a mass phenomenon without surrendering cultural hierarchy: yes, it’s fun; no, it’s not Shakespeare. But Sawyer’s real skill is the hedge that follows: “but not passing so soon.” It’s a correction mid-sentence, like watching an experienced interviewer revise her own script in real time because the data (ratings, workplace chatter, the sheer stickiness of the format) won’t let her be smug.

Contextually, this lands in the early-2000s moment when reality TV stopped being a novelty and became infrastructure. Idol wasn’t merely a show; it was a national ritual that fused talent search, audience participation, and brand-building into one weekly referendum. Sawyer’s line captures the media class negotiating that shift: admitting delight, predicting impermanence, then conceding that the “fancy” might have more cultural muscle than anyone expected.