report on yesterday’s false nuke alert<\/a> in Hawaii. It consisted of an interview between host Lourdes “Lulu” Garcia-Navarro and NPR reporter Tamara Keith, who happened to be on vacation in Honolulu when the alert struck.<\/p>\nGarcia-Navarro began with the mind-bending observation (and no, not spoken with even a trace of humor or irony), “I guess you weren’t expecting this.” <\/p>\n
Duh. No, everyone was actively waiting for their cellphones to warn them of Armageddon.<\/p>\n
Garcia-Navarro continued with brilliant questions like, “So … explain what people told you. I mean, um, what was the atmosphere like? What were they saying? Where they actually thinking that a ballistic missile might sort of land on Hawaii?”<\/p>\n
What exactly does might sort of land on Hawaii<\/em> mean? And why is it emerging from the mouth of a presumably highly paid “news” personality?<\/p>\nThe entire interview was laced with so many so<\/em>s and um<\/em>s and sort of<\/em>s and like<\/em>s and actually<\/em>s and repetitious sentences that there was hardly any room for actual<\/em> content. <\/p>\nHave you noticed how much that’s become the media norm? Even hosts and reporters who are otherwise capable of speaking adult-level English string their sentences out with um<\/em>s and er<\/em>s that should have been drummed out of them in their first semester of journalism school. But often, these alleged pros sound as if they’re still in<\/em> journalism school — and not at the top of their class, either.<\/p>\nSo here we are. We still get “news” filtered through media sensibilities (though we have more choice of sensibilities now). But we get it from people who don’t care enough to present themselves — or expect their employees to present themselves — professionally. <\/p>\n
Is this stating the obvious? People paid by “official” media outlets to present information on air should be trained in public speaking, with particular emphasis on ruthlessly eliminating their own vocal crutches and juvenile ticks. If they’re incapable of speaking compact, lucid, flowing English, they shouldn’t be allowed to broadcast childish natterings.<\/p>\n
I’m trying not to turn into an old grouch. Generally that’s working out quite well. There’s very, very little I miss about any mythical “good old days.” These days are better than any in my lifetime, despite all their chaos.<\/p>\n
But so, I’m like, actually, um, you know starting to miss Walter Cronkite.<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
The one thing I learned from the interview is that there isn’t much point in warning people they’re about to die unless you’ve previously given them solid information (preferably with drills) on what they should do to try to save themselves.<\/p>\n
It appears all most people did, other than randomly panic, was congregate in insecure places and fret.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Okay, I know Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, John Chancellor, Peter Jennings and their lot were all just shills. They made their living presenting one carefully selected part of the Establishment line. Their living was based equally on ensuring that We the Peasants didn’t hear about anything that might cause us to lose faith in Our Glorious Leaders in media and politics. We’re much, much better off now that we can get our news unfiltered. Or filtered through the sensibilities of … well, anybody with a YouTube or Twitter account. Aren’t we? Yes, we are, I remind myself. But at least…<\/p>\n
Continue reading“Were they actually thinking that a ballistic missile might sort of land on Hawaii?”<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,19,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-insanity","category-miscellaneous","category-war","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34669"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34681,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34669\/revisions\/34681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}