NO NEWS IS . . . ON EVERY MORNING

           

Is anybody else out there getting really tired of local television news?  I don’t care what channel it’s on, or from which state it is broadcast; it really needs some help.

Gone are the days of ladies and gentlemen who are actually dressed like ladies and gentlemen.  Gone are the days of the newspeople sitting behind a desk, delivering the news of the day with quiet dignity.

Now we have either wannabe comedians or wannabe Kardashians—and I’m not sure which is worse.

“Just look at what that bimbo’s wearing!” my husband, Stij,  is often heard to cry.  Stij has never been interested in women’s fashion.  Most of the time, not even in men’s.  He is interested in Levis and tee shirts with pockets.  He is a master woodworker—he has no need to be interested in haute couture.

But now, at seven a.m., he is outraged.

The “bimbo” in question is one of the two news anchors on our local channel 10.  Oh, and that’s another thing—news anchors travel in pairs now.  One bimbo (already mentioned) and one hopeless male buffoon who thinks he’s S.J. Perelman, but who sounds much more like a post-lobotomy Pauly Shore.

But back to the bimbo.

I squinted through slitted eyes (it was seven in the morning, after all) and saw what he meant. 

I knew about ladies of the evening, but now we seem to have ladies of the morning.  Why on earth this anorexic female with Double-D boobs thought that a skin-tight black leather miniskirt, a red blouse so frilly that it looked as if her chest had exploded, and leopard pumps with six-inch stiletto heels was appropriate for delivering anything but a list of prices for her various services, was completely beyond me.

All I’ll say about the buffoon is that he ought to be wearing a red nose that lights up.  A gag would be nice, too.

And now—at least where I live—the latest thing is to deliver the news standing—and not behind a desk, but out in the middle of the newsroom.  Evidently, they think that people will find the news more exciting if it’s broadcast from a newsroom “in action.”  However, what we normally end up viewing is some bored to death intern picking his nose at a computer screen.

Then they move along to the hard news!  I kid you not, I am not making this up, but they actually hold the front page of a newspaper up to the camera, pointing to the stories and discussing them.  And they will do this with a number of different papers from across the country.  Then, just as you’re throwing a noose over the nearest rafter, they move the camera to one of their computer monitors with headlines on it—I suppose for those who are more “technically inclined.”

After my husband stopped vibrating about the lack of decorum, he happened to notice something at the bottom left of the television screen.

“#*^%^&&**&%#@!$@#!!!!!  Do you BELIEVE this shit?” he roared.

There was a little notice that proclaimed that this was the news from eleven o’clock the previous night!

So this year, dear friends, we’re taking our vacation in Kansas City, Missouri so my husband can cry over Walter Cronkite’s grave.

And that’s the way it is, Friday, November 8, 2013.