--"He's from this country, Mexicans don't read him, so that's good enough for me."--Donald Trump
--"The one thing I didn't delete from my private server."--Hillary Clinton
--"Jimaschizzle!"--Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. (aka Snoop Dogg)
Original humor, personal rants, nuggets and snippets from columnists and essayists, and other items for your edification and amusement.
By Jim Szantor
Rhetorical questions, questionable rhetoric
and whimsical observations
about the absurdities of contemporary life
. . . a candy store of distractions
Owning up
8 New York Times columnists on what they got wrong
Climate disinformation leaves lasting mark
Many Americans distrust the scientific consensus
The lucrative world of expert witnesses
The Depp-Heard trial was the
latest courtroom battle to call attention to the gainful microeconomy of expert
witnesses
Inflation ate your lunch . . .
. . . but believe it
or not, you’re still better off!
What animals can perceive that we can’t
The human sensory experience is limited
Opinion Shocker: Almost no one trusts TV news
It’s one of the 21st Century’s evergreen stories: Public confidence in the U.S. media has reached a new low! Such was the announcement from Gallup on [July 18}, as the company published results of a June poll on Americans’ views of institutions. A mere 11 percent of U.S. adults have either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in TV news, Gallup found, with the share for newspapers slightly higher, at 16 percent. The Gallup confidence trend line reflects inexorable momentum toward zero.
Only Congress, at 7 percent, secured less confidence than TV news.
The polling indicates that the partisan gap spanning viewers’ confidence in TV news is closing: In 2020, 33 percent of Democrats had “a great deal/quite a lot” of confidence in TV news, compared to just 7 percent for Republicans (a 26-point gap); in 2021, it was 26 percent of Democrats and 6 percent of Republicans (a 20-point gap). This year, that gap closed to 12 points, suggesting that dim views of TV news are becoming an across-the-aisle phenomenon, something we can all agree on.
Because the polling doesn’t delve into the reasons behind these trends, the Erik Wemple Blog feels duty-bound to speculate. Here goes: The Gallup confidence numbers reflect, at least in part, the role of major TV news providers in discrediting their competitors. Turn on Fox News in the prime-time hours, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to hear the latest blasts against MSNBC and CNN. “Fake news CNN” is the term that host Sean Hannity frequently uses to introduce the network so despised by his mentee, Donald Trump. A staple of Fox News programming is a mash-up of voices from CNN, MSNBC and other networks--assembled and packaged for maximum sneering potential. Most of the criticism is baseless tripe hatched to advance Trump or some other Fox News hobbyhorse, though there have been plenty of legitimate reasons to bash MSNBC and CNN over the years.
For their part, CNN and MSNBC do good work in attacking and debunking the lies, distortions and hatred on Fox News. There’s a lot to work with, from the segments that promoted the “big lie” after the 2020 presidential election--which triggered two ongoing lawsuits from two voting-technology companies that were attacked on Fox News without basis, they argue--to the credulous coverage of Trump to the racist rantings of host Tucker Carlson.
Just to be clear, we’re not alleging equivalence between CNN/MSNBC and Fox News. There is none. Yet the professionalization of the cable wars surely plays a role in the plummeting numbers that Gallup finds. Our line of analysis downplays the role of the legacy broadcast networks and other competitors such as PBS and C-SPAN, but let’s face it: Fox News, CNN and MSNBC play an outsize role in popular conceptions of what TV news has become.
So, do these confidence numbers spell doom for the cable networks?
Nah. Pew Research Center tracks the size of the cable-news audience, and here’s a look at how it trended in the Trump years: Daytime audiences followed a similar trajectory. So while the cable-news audience increased from 2016 to 2020, according to Pew, confidence among American adults in TV news dropped, according to Gallup. Those two phenomena may appear incompatible,but think about it: Viewers of MSNBC/CNN may well have been tuning in to hear more reasons they should lose confidence in Fox News; and viewers of Fox News may well have been tuning into hear more reasons they should lose confidence in MSNBC/CNN.
Now there’s a sustainable business model.
--Erik Wemple, Washington Post media critic
Has Florida man met his match? Meet Florida Sheriff
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP)--When a naked man in southwestern Florida recently raised a ruckus outside his house and threatened a deputy with a kitchen knife, the SWAT team swooped in and apprehended him.
Soon afterward, Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno stood on the man’s driveway in combat gear for a news conference while the suspect went to the jailhouse that the sheriff likes to call the “Marceno Motel.”
“He’s an oxygen-stealer and a scumbag, and I’m glad he’s outta here,” Marceno told reporters. “I’m proud to say that in this county, if you present deadly physical force . . . we meet you with deadly force every time, and we win. It’s pretty clean, pretty quick.”
The Sunshine State has become internationally notorious for the oddball miscreants who populate its police blotters and local news reports--known collectively as Florida Man. There are murders and mayhem, like anyplace else, and then there are the only-in-Florida incidents like the man charged with assault with a deadly weapon for throwing an alligator through a Wendy’s drive-thru window in Palm Beach County in 2015.
But an equally eccentric cast of hard-boiled sheriffs make a career of going after these guys. Florida Man, meet Florida Sheriff.
All but one of Florida’s 67 counties have an elected sheriff, and they wield enormous influence in part because they’re often the only countywide elected official. They head agencies that typically patrol unincorporated portions of their county but also provide backup to city police departments and sometimes patrol small cities that lack their own force. Many, like Marceno, hold made-for-YouTube news conferences and use TikTok and other social media--frequently going just as viral as the perpetrators.
Take Santa Rosa County Sheriff Bob Johnson, in Florida’s Panhandle.
During a recent news conference about a burglary, Johnson, elected in 2016, said a homeowner had fired shots but didn’t hit the suspect. Johnson encouraged that homeowner to take a gun safety course offered every other Saturday at the sheriff’s office so he could better take matters into his own hands.
“Learn to shoot a lot better,” Johnson said. “Save the taxpayers’ money.”
On the Atlantic Coast, near Cape Canaveral, Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey makes a game of crime--literally. His weekly “Wheel of Fugitive” videos feature the sheriff spinning a wheel with photos of 10 of the county’s most wanted.
“Everybody watches it. Even the fugitives watch it” to see who becomes “fugitive of the week,” Ivey said.
The lucky winner of one recent episode was a 32-year-old white male accused of petty theft and failure to appear. The sheriff, first elected in 2012, looked into the camera as if speaking directly to the man and urged him to surrender: “Stop messing up and stop breaking the law. Get all of it behind you.”
The Twitter account of Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco--who has starred in A&E Network’s “Live PD” show--made a splash with local “Sad Criminal of the Day” posts. His agency also copyrighted the now-viral hashtag, #9pmroutine, a reminder to lock car doors and homes every night.
In January, the department cut off social media comments because the accounts fell victim to their success. With over 300,000 Facebook followers--more than double that of much larger Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in nearby Tampa--Nocco said people were too often reporting crimes online rather than calling 911.
Over in central Florida is, perhaps, the highest-profile enemy of Florida Man (and Florida Woman).
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who constantly targets gangs, drug dealers and prostitution rings in his folksy Southern drawl, has been a frequent hit on TV since he was first elected with no party affiliation in 2005. Judd says of school shooters: “We’re going to shoot you graveyard dead.”
He also has praised homeowners for firing on intruders, including one last December: “He gave him an early Christmas present. Only Santa Claus gets to come in your house,” Judd told a news conference.
Judd often refers to the Polk County Jail as the “Polk Pokey,” and last holiday season, his office sold their version of the popular Elf on the Shelf doll, dubbed Sheriff on a Shelf, and he personally autographed Sheriff Judd bobbleheads.
One of Judd’s latest targets was not exactly the crime of the century. But Judd had plenty to say about a woman accused of assaulting workers at a McDonald’s because her order was wrong.
“She’s a pretty lady. But she was McMad,” Judd said on May 20. “I don’t know if she was two fries short of a Happy Meal, but she created a McMess and acted like a McNut. ... This is Polk County. We don’t put up with that McJunk.”
--Freida Fisaro and Curt Anderson
Blaming social media for academia's ruin misses a larger, darker truth
It is tempting to postulate technological determinism as the answer to this question: Why are extremism, irrationality, fear and censoriousness especially rampant where they should be next to nonexistent? However, to blame social media for the anti-social behaviors that today characterize academia misses a larger, darker truth.10 more David Foster Wallace quotes
1. “It is often more fun to want something than to have it.”
2. “I’d tell you all you want and more if the sounds I made could be what you hear.”
3. “That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.”
4. “Every love story is a ghost story.”
5. “To be, in a word, unborable… It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.”
6. “If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means, stay home if you want, but don’t bullshit yourself that you’re not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard’s vote.”
7. “It takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak.”
8. “Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.”
9. “Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.”
10. “How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.”
Liars, losers and the lessons of ‘Antiques Roadshow’
When a writer of my age (42) and sensibilities (vaguely anarchic) is tasked with reporting on PBS’s long-running hit “Antiques Roadshow,” his first impulse is to lengthen the sentences, ramp up the pathos and do his best impression of Hunter S. Thompson’s “The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved.” Unfortunately for me, but perhaps to your benefit as the 2/4 reader, I was accompanied to the “Roadshow” by my parents, who are both in their 70s and not particularly interested in seeing their middle-aged son trying to resurrect the ambitions of his literary youth.
The premise of “Antiques Roadshow” is relatively simple: People bring antique items — often things they found in their parents’ attic — to the show, where a rotating host of appraisers ask them to relate each object’s story, which usually winds through a family lineage (the most common phrase on the show might be “my grandfather was an avid collector of …”) and includes some noncommittal, open-ended declaration, like “and it’s been sitting on top of our fireplace ever since.” These mostly strike me as the whitest of lies — surely, at some point, the person put in some time to Google the mysterious and ancient-looking heirloom.
We weren’t all that innocent, either. My parents have an ancient Chinese scroll they wanted appraised. Part of the scroll is made up of two colophons, which are calligraphic accompaniments to a painting that are usually written and signed by the painter. The other part of the scroll is a landscape painting. My mother, in true “Antiques Roadshow” fashion, found this thing in a thrift store. After some close examination, my parents realized that it might be very old. After quite a bit of digging and some consultations with experts, they determined that it was indeed very old. There is not yet an agreement on how old it is — the process of authenticating ancient art can be highly subjective and open to debate — but estimates indicate it’s from sometime in the late 17th century. Intriguingly enough, the calligraphic part of the scroll carries the signature and seal of Dong Qichang, a very well-known painter and calligrapher who was active in the 16th and 17th centuries.
The mystery of this scroll has been occupying my parents for the past couple of years. My wife, in the hopes of finding some resolution for all this, entered us into a lottery for “Roadshow” tickets and won. Our strategy was to play a little dumb — it’s true that we have no real idea what this thing is worth, but my father has tracked down a few academics and museum curators to give their assessments — but I told them that they should keep the story simple, and as truthful as television would allow. If they were asked, for example, if they had ever had an expert look at the scroll, they should just pretend not to have heard the question or quickly change the subject. That was my job — I was the guy who was there to change the subject.
Which is all to say, there was something both decadent and depraved about “Antiques Roadshow.” This episode was filmed at Filoli, a country estate built in the early 20th century by one of California’s gold mining barons. Today the site is a museum of sorts, with dozens of acres of well-kept gardens filled with camellias, daffodils and wildflowers. If you’ve seen the film “Harold and Maude” and can recall the gigantic, austere house where Harold plays grisly pranks on his mother, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how these California Gilded Age-style mansions make you feel an even mix of revulsion at their garishness and appreciation for just how well the garishness has been executed.
The crowd of liars, mostly between the ages of 65 and 95, was in good spirits as they dragged their curiosities between a series of tents set up all around the estate. It wasn’t quite a pilgrimage, more like a music festival for the Lexus-driving fans of Eckhart Tolle. At every cluster of tents, there was a television setup with lights and sound equipment and a series of cameras.
In our quest to make it in front of one of those cameras, we had to first present our scroll to a preliminary screener, who then directed us to the Asian art tent. We were introduced to an appraiser named Lark Mason III, the son of Lark Mason Jr. of Lark Mason Associates in New York City, which is something I learned when the youngest Lark introduced himself with, “My name is Lark, my father’s name is Lark, and my grandfather’s name is Lark.” This was all great theater. My mother handed him the scroll, which he unfurled and began to read in Chinese. He asked my parents if they knew what the scroll said, which they said they did not. (It’s unclear to me if they were lying about this.) While scrolling, Lark III went through the usual litany of questions: Where did you get this? How much did you pay for it? Do you know what you have here? But once he got to the painting part of the scroll, he suddenly stopped, and a look of concern fell over his face. “Excuse me,” he said. “I need to show this to someone.”
We had him! Lark showed the scroll to an older appraiser, who quickly went through and whispered her assessment to Lark. The only words I could make out were “colophons” and “apocryphal,” which weren’t great signs, but then Lark came back and said that he needed a producer from the show to come by to take a look and could we please wait nearby.
I texted my wife and tweeted that we had made it through the first round. For the next 45 minutes, we sat in the hot sun and waited. Our little perch was next to the Native American tent, and I watched as a procession of old people emptied out boxes of moccasins and arrowheads. Nothing seemed to be worth all that much, but everyone was happy just to be in the presence of the appraisers who had been seen on television.
My parents were under the impression that this producer was going to be the real expert in Asian art. They speculated that she must not be particularly good on television, at least compared with Lark, with his royal blue blazer and his young Kennedy haircut. I told them that this producer was probably just someone who would decide whether the scroll was worthy of being on television. Would our story hold up?
Knowing we had a chance to perhaps get on television was thrilling and gave me a fleeting sense of superiority, which was ridiculous, given that I wasn’t even going to be on camera, nor was it my scroll. Last year, the writer Stephen Lurie wrote a touching ode to “Antiques Roadshow” in which he argued that the show’s “popularity might stem from the paradox at its core: This show about putting a price tag on coveted possessions is not actually about money. It’s not about getting rich, playing the market, amassing wealth or even acquiring nice things. In a show whose segments are punctuated by dollar amounts, there’s actually a quiet, persistent suggestion to direct our aspirations somewhere else: history, family, sentiment, even love.”
All these heirloom tapestries, Coca-Cola signs, baseball cards and old chairs get appraised for disappointing amounts and then are lugged back to the attic to eventually get handed down to the next generation. Lurie points out it’s estimated that more than 90 percent of people who come to the show end up keeping their objects, which he sees as proof that the animating spirit of the show is not capitalism but rather “the sanctity of stories, family, empathy.” People watch “Antiques Roadshow,” in other words, to come away disappointed at the price, but also to find that perhaps the connection to, say, their grandmother’s Tiffany lamp (fake) was more important than whatever money it could fetch. It’s a nice thought.
After about an hour wait, the producer came over and asked my parents a few questions, took the scroll, had a hushed conversation with Lark and then hurried away. Lark walked over and said he was sorry, but the producer had said it was going to be too hard to display the scroll on television, which did seem reasonable enough. He then told us that the calligraphic section of the scroll was definitely not a genuine Dong Qichang, but that the painting, which he noted was “beautiful,” was probably from the 19th century and was worth anywhere up to $2,000. “Now tell me again how much you paid for it,” Lark said. When my mother said $50 again, Lark said, “I want to go shopping with you!”
On the way out to the parking lot, my mother, who talks to everyone within a 10-foot radius, struck up a conversation with two women who were carrying a set of tapestries. They were incensed that they had only gotten a valuation of $40 and asked my mother if she had gotten good news. My mother laughed and said not really. “These people have no idea what they’re looking at!” one of the women told her. They shared another laugh.
This, I believe, is the actual spirit of the show, at least for the losers like us who walk to the parking lot without getting on TV. It’s true that when I watch the show, I always feel a slight resentment toward the big winners, especially when it’s clear they just inherited some priceless painting that they clearly know is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. But I don’t think the televised losers — the ones who visibly wince when they’re told that their chair is, unfortunately, a reproduction — go back feeling more connected with their families. Instead they feel something much more animating and pure: a stubborn, American distrust of experts, and the camaraderie of the underbid and underappreciated.
--Jay Caspian Kang, a writer for Opinion and The New York Times Magazine, is the author of "The Loneliest Americans."
BY JIM SZANTOR
The chili could be
malicious and downright unforgiving. The
omelets sometimes look like yellow Play-Doh flecked with foreign bodies. The coffee isn’t strong enough to defend
itself, and the waitress puts the plates down with an offhand finality. Breakfast served any time. Eggs any style. The soup? It’s navy bean.
It’s easy to put down the greasy spoon, that
ubiquitous testament to the tacky and the Tums.
But by whatever name—luncheonette, diner, café, grill, coffee shop,
ptomaine parlor—it used to account for 40-50 percent of the eat-out dollar,
according to industry sources. Now? Not so much, as changing tastes and the sweep
of urban renewal have relegated it into a virtual museum piece--a slow-food
square peg in a round hole of a fast-food, instant-everything, drive-through
and highly hyphenated universe. Some things just sort of happen, with no grand
design or Machiavellian malice aforethought.
But the greasy spoon was a slice of Americana
that clung to the fork with nary a nod to fad or fashion. There were no vegetarian plates, as meat and
potatoes carried the day and the night and the mortgage. The Serv-Naps filed out of their countertop
compartments as the daily duet of eat-and-runs and lingerers played their way
through an unconducted arrangement. The
beef was “govt.-inspected”—but did it pass?
There was a counter-top jukebox selector, with some pop, some country,
some rock but definitely no Rachmaninoff.
You know the
place. Everyone, whether through
happenstance, resignation or momentary indifference has ended up at one of
these Edward Hopper-esque establishments, clutching a greasy knife or fork. How
the spoon, which generally just stirred the coffee, got left holding the bag is
a mysteryforever lost in the mists of time.
Whatever their
culinary merits, one could develop an irrational affection for the emporiums of
this genre. And they were more than
eating places. Sociologically they could
be an over-the-counter salve for the tattered psyches of the urban disenfranchised,
who hoped they wouldn’t close on Christmas and trap them in their cheap hotel
rooms. They were sort of halfway hash
house social clubs, with no membership list but plenty of dues, where the help
was as transient as the trade.
Some of these motley
establishments were actually respectable—sometimes good—and do not deserve to
be painted in such tawdry tones. Almost
always locally owned, they were probably more consistent at their level than
some tonier “destination dining” spots and had a more devoted clientele, who
prided themselves on being regulars, never had to state their orders and were
probably as good as the National Guard should someone get surly with the
waitress. Perhaps the key to their fate
is how many such places are opening these days, not how many are closing.
But while there’s
time, the eyes above the menu survey the scene and laugh and marvel at a few
things:
--The waitress
always looks like she is glad they sre out of whatever they are out of.
--The catsup bottle
says “restaurant pack,” whatever that’s supposed to mean.
--The busboy is a
strong man--a bit too strong—but he didn’t shower up with Irish Spring.
--There’s a
fill-up-the-sugar-container fetish that is hard to fathom. Today’s two fingers’ worth on top of yesterday’s
two fingers’ worth. The sugar at the
bottom was refined in 1952.
--The “chef” has
more tattoos than specialties and thinks “Guide Michelin” plays for the
Montreal Canadiens.
--The cream pies and
such are kept at a tongue-numbing 33 degrees.
--The sandwich
plates are larger than they need to be, but the dinner plates. . . .
--The cashier/owner
always seems to be eating ice cream out of a coffee cup on a stool near the
cash register.
--They honor the
“law” that says coleslaw shall be served in flimsy paper or plastic cups and in
minute amounts.
--The spaghetti
always comes with “rich meat sauce.”
--The menu always
has an item or two that no one has ever ordered. Who orders Red Snapper in places like this?
--If you want
something to go, you have to stand in a special place, probably so they won’t
confuse you with people who prefer to eat standing up with their hands in their
pockets.
--The floor is
usually brown-and-yellow tile squares, in accordance with the Seedy Restaurant
Color Scheme Act of 1942.
--Some old guy
always comes in about 10 p.m. and orders a bowl of bran cereal.
---The menu is a
Sargasso Sea of misspelled names and fanciful if not fraudulent
descriptions. From the Broiler. From the Sea.
But never From the Freezer.
--The server never
fills in all those bureaucratic squares at the top of the “guest check” and writes
diagonally across the lined form. What’s
more, she has a Ph.D. in abbreviations.
--One of the
customers always looks like he is doing his income tax at one of the tables.
--Somebody always
walks by the window and waves in just before he disappears.
--You’re the only
one at the counter, and some guy walks in and sits right next to you.
--The french-fried
shrimp comes with enough cocktail sauce to cover about two pieces.
--The table’s wobble
is always half-corrected with a dirty folded napkin or three.
--The clock is
always stopped at something like 2:42.
--The Muzak is
always playing something like “Never on Sunday” or “Nom Domenticar.”
--The cook flip-slides the plates across the high stainless-steel
counter, and they always stop short, as if equipped with disk brakes.
--The cashier always
puts your change down on a spikey rubber thing that looks like an oversized
scalp massager.
****************************************************************************
In the early morning
lull, after the midnight rush hour subsides, the buzz of the fluorescent now
equals the sizzle of the grill as the beat cop walks in and sinks into the
house booth.
“Say,
where’s Sally? She off tonight?”
“Nah, she quit. Went back with her old man.”
“Oh . . . . Say, you
got any a that meat loaf left. Haven’t
eaten all day.”
“Nah, meat loaf’s
out. All’s I got left is thueringer.”
“Thueringer,
huh. Well . . . gimme a piece of that
blueberry.”
(Illustration: Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks,” 1942)
Forecast Follies (or . . . "Here's Jim with the Weather")
Mark Twain famously said, ”Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”
And since reports of Mr. Twain’s death were not highly exaggerated, I’d like to fill in for him and address something we apparently can’t do anything about, either—the nonsensical, downright insulting barrage of verbiage issuing forth daily from what used to be called TV “weathermen” (and they were all of that gender back in the day) but are now known as “meteorologists,” as if space rocks were an omnipresent factor in our lives. As in, “60 percent chance of precipitation by daybreak, with 0.000001 percent chance of meteor collision.” (Meteor showers do occur, but usually are not perilous enough to cancel your picnic plans. They have yet to be seen in the Bus Stop Forecasts or the Car Wash Advisories that “humanize” these bloated segments.)
The weather portions (there are usually two—a fairly brief “teaser” early on and later, the Big Production) of most TV newscasts are, first of all, way too long (and coupled with all those time-wasting teasers about “what’s coming up,” leave precious little time for what we actually tune in for—news). We don’t need to know where the Alberta Clipper fizzled, that an El Nino is in mid-formation or that a front in central Montana caused a “dusting” in northern Iowa. And as for those “pockets of snow” we were supposed to get last night, I looked in mine and, blessedly, found none. But the station has paid serious coin for all of the glitzy graphics and radar capabilities, and by God, they are going to be used, if even just to show us what the rainfall looks like in downtown Racine “right at this very moment.” Gripping.
And then
there is the universal, comically contrived “personalization” factor, apparently
de rigueur on all stations. It’s never “Thursday’s forecast,” it’s (ahem), “the
forecast for your Thursday . . . .”
One can only envision the rapturous glow viewers must feel when luxuriating
in the warmth of that gratuitous pronoun! (As if that forecast applies only to
you, no one else. Ah, exclusivity.)
If one were to awaken from a 30-year coma, he or she would probably be mystified not only by cellphones, laptops and GPS devices but also by the existence of a curious phenomenon known as The Weather Channel: All weather, all the time--a nonstop barrage of jargon, gaudy graphics and arcane factoids. How did we ever exist without it? When it’s a slow weather day (and in this day of acute climate change, there’s always a crisis on the front burner somewhere), footage of past calamities will fill the bill for weather junkies or the aficionados of disaster porn.
Those with (ahem) backgrounds as editors find the nightly weather segments to be cringefests in the extreme. Temps don’t just drop into the 20s, they “drop down,” as if “dropping up” were a physical possibility. Is snow or rain in the forecast? No, we’ll have “snow showers” or “rain showers.” And it’s never just “sun”; it’s “sunshine,” as if that extra syllable ramps up the warmth. These folks never pass up an opportunity to gild the lily, because we’re often told of the possibility of “rain events” or “snow events,” which leads me, at least, to wonder if I will need a ticket, if there will be guest speakers and if refreshments will be served. (Spotty Showers? That was my clown name back in the day, a story to be told when the Vernal Equinox rolls around. Which this year, in the Northern Hemisphere, will be at 10:33 a.m. CST on March 20. Mark your calendar.)
But my pique rises to fever pitch in winter, when we’re often told during our seven-month layered-look season to “bundle up,” as if we lifelong Midwesterners have no prior experience with winter weather--as if we had all just parachuted in from Jamaica in our underwear and had no idea on how to adorn ourselves in these brutal climes. We don’t need to be told how to dress when icicles form—we’ve been there, done that—and resent the insinuation. One of the local weather wordsmiths hails from San Diego, and he’s telling us what to wear? Outrageous. I’d like to send him back to sunny California on his surfboard or his skateboard, preferably when the barometric pressure equals the dew point and, optimally, on a jet stream.
More and more women are seen these days holding forth during TV weather segments, and they have proven themselves every bit the equal of the men—long-winded and grammatically challenged. Positive role models apparently are non-existent; the often-parodied “weather bunnies” are blessedly a thing of the past (their anatomical attributes far outweighed their academic credentials), and the first exemplary female trailblazer with any gravitas has yet to be found.
So please, Mr., Mrs. or Ms. Meteorologist, do us all a favor: Stop behaving as if you are getting paid by the word, spare me the details about weather phenomena that have no bearing on our locale and, most of all, stop insulting our intelligence. Chill out, stick to the weather and let us worry about our wardrobes. Failing that, my fondest wish is that I could take all of you, get you all bundled up and sent to the Sahara. There’s a 99.99 percent chance that you won’t need an umbrella or have to worry about a lake effect, a polar vortex or banal banter with the anchor desk.
And now here’s Al with the Sports.
--Jim Szantor
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Soloist Jim Szantor as lead alto David Bixler gives the cutoff on the final chord.
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Part of the evening's program.
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