The Thing on Brokaw’s Lip

In 1995 I scraped together enough of my earnings as a telephone operator to take a literary journalism class through the University of Washington Extension. Tom Brokaw, anchor of the NBC Nightly News, had gotten me interested in journalism with his much cooler job. While I was answering calls, he was getting airdropped into the biggest happenings on the planet. Like millions of my fellow citizens, I sat in front of a TV at the appointed time each night to see what he was up to next. Like my fellow students, I hoped maybe there was a future for me in a field that could get you paid for going to interesting places.

It did not take many classes to parlay that ambition into solid evidence that I was not qualified. At least for anything like serious news. In this early assignment I confessed to the class that I couldn’t always pay attention to the important parts of Brokaw’s presentations. Through their feedback, I found that many were in the same boat. Little did we know that the biggest happening of our lifetimes, widespread adoption of the Web, was just around the corner. To be followed by a bottomless tsunami of useless and mindnumbing content, enough to make everybody struggle to focus on the important stuff.

Fast forward three decades and “brain rot” is Oxford’s 2024 word of the year. Yikes.

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Tom Brokaw has a thing on his lip. Not much of a thing really, just a little mark, but enough to be bothersome. Enough to induce, as it bobs up and down to the tune of a world in flux, an almost clinical fixation in yours truly. It’s a staple of the NBC Nightly News set now as far as I’m concerned, been there for years. And like the proverbial oddball in the front row, it never fails to steal my attention. For a long time I didn’t notice. Now that I have, I can’t stop.

Technically, the thing, a miniscule triangular patch, is on his philtrum, the chute-like structure that runs from the tip of the upper lip, the tubercle, to the base of the Brokaw schnoz. From where I watch, usually about twenty feet away (or is it three thousand miles?), my preferred news anchor’s philtrum appears to be of typical with, 10.5 millimeters or so, and length, about 16 millimeters. Over the years, the occasional action shot, some of his Berlin Wall work comes to mind, has revealed a philtrum that sweeps down and out from it’s subnasal takeoff point at an ordinary, almost ho-hum, nasolabial angle. Something like the standard one to two degrees. Nostril floor widths, measured from the centerline of the philtrum to the basal corners of the nose, check out as well. All in all, at least to the armchair maxillofacial surgeon, Tom Brokaw has an extremely run-of-the-mill beak. Except for that damn thing.

Granted it’s difficult to make an accurate dignosis over the airwaves (in a typical studio shot the entirety of Brokaw’s kisser takes up maybe a thumb on a 12 inch TV screen), but library research rules out any sort of congenital defect. Clearly it’s not a cleft lip, a failure of the proto-nasal process to fuse with the invading maxillary process in the first trimester. Can’t be - it’s within the philtrum, not alongside it, and it’s triangular, not like a scar from the knitting together of the philtrum and flesh to one side. No other likely defects, congenital or otherwise, suggested themselves during my research. If it’s not one of those, or a thusly produced scar, then it’s got to be from some sort of accident.

But what kind of accident produces a triangular scar? My portfolio doesn’t include one, that’s for sure, just lines and the occasional circle. And did it happen before or after he began his rise to the top? Did it happen during one of those “Fly Boys” adventures that’s gotten his picture into the Patagonia catalog? How about when he and Patagonia boss Yvon Chouinard climbed Rainier? Was the key grip hurt too? Do makeup artists and lighting specialists do lunch over it? Have memos been passed by the NBC brass?

Whatever happened, or whatever it is, NBC’s not saying. I decided to call the corporate switchboard in Manhattan, with “a few questions about Mr. Brokaw.” The operator, a model of nonchalance, said “Oh. I’ll transfer you up to his office, maybe you can ask him yourself.” WHAT? Ask him myself? But…, wait…, I could never…. Too late, I was already on my way. I set my trigger finger on the bailout switch in case things got dicey. What the hell am I doing? No way can I ask Brokaw how he got that thing on his philtrum. Please don’t have caller ID. Thankfully, Brokaw wasn’t in, and I got the secretary. “It’s just the way he talks,” I was told, there’s really nothing there. The smirk in her voice said more: Shame on you for asking, Crackpot. We’re providing news here, important stuff, who cares what’s on Brokaw’s lip?

Well, quite frankly, I do. And I suspect I’m not alone. That’s exactly the kind of thing that I can’t help caring about. Literally, I can’t help it. The open flys, stained ties, and bad hair days of the world are absolutely riveting. Cold Wars and labor disputes, not so much. I’ll sit through the “important” stories and try to pay attention, but it takes a lot of trying. That’s the point. The stuff I really should care about doesn’t suit my palate. Situations like the one with Brokaw’s lip, on the other hand, go down smooth as candy.