I was going to write about yesterday’s rejection by Dutch voters of the EU Constitution*, but I think we’re all in agreement as to the implications regarding member nation sovereignty and cultural assimilation. Instead, I’d like to turn my attention to a far more pressing issue, and that is the ever increasing annoyance of certain local TV newscasters to use the word “busted” in place of far more elegant alternatives.
You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a reporter telling us that “the windows were busted out,” or “the water main busted around midnight,” or “the vandals busted up furniture and computer equipment.” This engenders in me the same reaction as fingernails across a blackboard (you do remember blackboards, don’t you?) or seeing Rosie O’Donnell on a made-for-TV movie.
I perceive this to be a generational phenomenon, by the way. The practice seems to be more prevalent on one local station (no names, of course, but the network rhymes with “In Bee See”) where some of the newscasters are younger than most of my socks. My advice to them is to grab a thesaurus, wherein they’ll find all sorts of wonderful alternatives, thereby freeing me up to write about my first love: those zany European political antics.
*It’s obvious that the EU is trying to emulate the Texas Constitution. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting yet another amendment to the Texas Constitution. In fact, I’m pretty sure that dead cat swinging is specifically addressed in an amendment therein. Still, at just under 100,000 words (but growing), Texas falls short of the EU’s efforts by 75%. I guess that not everything is bigger in Texas, after all.
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When you run out of dead cats to swing, let me know. I will box some up and ship them to you via UPS.
I think there’s constitutional amendment against the intrastate shipping of deceased felines. You might have to drive to a post office in Louisiana.
“I think there’s constitutional amendment against the intrastate shipping of deceased felines.”
You’d be surprised the stuff you can send, including dead animals. Most taxidermy sites offering skull cleaning using Dermestid beetles (don’t ask) accept UPS. A fully cleaned dead cat skull (including lower jaw) costs about $45.
Mounts like deer cost a lot more and there’s a real risk that during transit the antlers might get (wait for it) busted.
Sometimes, you’re way too literal, Mr. Freen! 😉
I think local television news is annoying everywhere. I live in Cincinnati and the news stations here frequetly preempt regularly scheduled programming for things like a house fire somewhere in the city. Then, just last week, there was a hostage crisis in a nearby town and they made us wait until the news at 11 to hear more information about it. Now, Cincinnati is by no means an enormous city, but it’s large enough that a house fire where no one is hurt is not newsworthy. . .at least not newsworthy enough to interrupt Jeopardy! for. There’s a house fire somewhere in the city just about every day, so let me watch TV and tell me about it at 11.
Josh, we don’t get a lot of interruptions for news, but this time of year, we do get regular break-ins for weather-related watches and warnings. I have to keep reminding myself that those interruptions are important to someone, even if they’re not relevant to me.
What happens up here is that the news stations are all clamoring to be the “first station with YOUR breaking news!” So they tend to throw news values out the window and interrupt regular tv news with whatever they can find going on in the city. One of my professors this last semester is a producer at a local news station, and when I mentioned the problem to him, he said he agreed but there’s nothing he can do about it.
I think we can see this phenomenon across the spectrum of media, where the outlet forgets that it’s all about the listener/reader/viewer, and not all about the radio station/newspaper/TV station. I’d even venture to say that some blogs fall prey to that mindset! 😉
Absolutely. Traditional media outlets are all bound to their advertisers. . .to a certain extent. And you really can’t blame them. After all, with no advertisers there would be no traditional news media. This realization on my part does not make their interruptions any less annoying, however.
Josh and Eric. on behalf of the debauched harlots of the mainstream/traditional media everywhere, I’d like to respond to a couple fo your posts.
Cutting into regular programming with a breaking news story is not just about letting everyone see the pretty pictures as they happen, or earning the bragging rights of being ‘fustest with the mostest.’ It’s also about alerting the public to a situation they may wish to avoid. When we cut-in with reports – of fires, bomb scares, particularly bad traffic accidents, whatever – they include location information, and encouragements for people to avoid the area if at all possible. It can help reduce congestion as traffic finds alternative rotes to get where they’re going. It also helps keep the area clear for emergency traffic that needs to get in and out.
These cut-ins also provide information that might otherwise only be available from somebody’s telephone switchboard – a school, for example – which could get easily overwhelmed by parents wanting to know what’s going on, whether the kids are safe, and what the parents need to do.
So, why wasn’t the hostage situation the topic of a live cut-in? In your particular case, Josh, I don’t know. But we had one in Odessa, a couple of years back, where the police requested that we not go live from the location, when it was pointed out that live audio/video from the scene would offer the hostage-holder a clear view of what was going on outside. We honored that request. Perhaps that was the case for your people, in Ohio, as well.
Jeff, I’m glad to hear that our local TV stations are much more selfless than those in Cincinnati. 😉
This really got off-topic, by the way, and I’m surprised you haven’t weighed in on my original gripe.