If I Could Be Anyone...

Today is the 'If I Could Be Anyone, I'd Be...' web splash for Talli Rolands new book, Watching Willow Watts. Almost 150 bloggers have signed up to post about who they would be, if they could choose anyone. Pop by and visit other participants, if you have a chance.

So I bet you all recognize this woman. Yes if I could be anyone this would be the woman I would want to be. I never did get to finish my college education but as a  student of Journalism , this was the woman I aspired to be like. Barbara Walters is an amazing  woman. She was the first female co-anchor of network evening news. She was first known as a popular TV morning news anchor for over 10 years on NBC's Today, and later spent 25 years as co-host of ABC's newsmagazine 20/20.

On June 14, 2007, Walters received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She has won Daytime and Prime Time Emmy Awards, a Women in Film Lucy Award, and a GLAAD Excellence in Media award. In the fall of 2008, she was honored with the Disney Legends award, an award given to those who made an outstanding contribution to The Walt Disney Company, which owns the network ABC. That same year, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the New York Women's Agenda. On September 21, 2009, Walters was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 30th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards at New York City's Lincoln Center.

In the late 1960s, Walters wrote a magazine article, How to Talk to Practically Anyone About Practically Anything, which drew upon the kinds of things people said to her, which were often mistakes.Shortly after the article appeared, she received a letter from Doubleday expressing interest in expanding it into a book.  She published the book in 1970, and to her great surprise, the book was a phenomenon. As of 2008, it had gone through eight printings, sold hundreds of thousands of copies worldwide, and had been translated into at least 6 different languages. In 2008, she published her autobiography, Audition: A Memoir.

Barbara Walters has been married four times to three different men. "I'm convinced that you stay married when the sex is bad, only because you really want to be," she told The New York Times in 1996. "But I always had an out. I had this job, and this life and enough money. I didn't have to fight the bad days." She has been around the world and met the most interesting people in her travels. Kings, queens, politicians, religious leaders and movie stars have all been met by her charming voice and interesting question.

Like me she believes that to "not sing with an orchestra, to not be able to communicate through my voice, which I`ve done all my life, and not to be able to phrase lyrics and give people that kind of joy, I think I would be totally devastated."

If you could choose to be anyone else other than yourself, who would that be?