One of the various Lectionary readings for today comes from First Samuel where the Lord sends Samue to Jesse to find the next king of Israel, the second king actually who will be David: "Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the LORD looks into the heart."
Mary and I were watching a recording of the 11 o'clock news tonight on Ch 36, one I hardly ever watch. First, I truly dislike watching local newscasts for I find the reporters frequently to be silly and pretentious. The women are worse than the men, frequently. The group of people I have the most trouble with though are the weather people, the meteorologists. They could give a full forecast in twenty seconds, yet they talk for five minutes, reading the temperature for each city in the state when we can see it too, frequently trying to be cute and entertaining, bending their bodies this way and that to point to their maps and charts and records. Most of the worst offenders here are men.
When there is a meteorological crisis, I find them insufferable as they attempt to do us a community service, finding tornadoes, warning against floods, pointing out areas of downpours, telling us to get indoors, as if we carried our huge TVs around with us just so we could watch them. Well, One of my sources of anger and outrage is what they do to the language, which is also part of the pretentiousness. Lately I have noticed the kind of mock humility in their calling the weekdays "your" weekdays. "Your Monday is going to be a really pleasant day." My Monday? He doesn't have one, or is it that sense that the viewer's Monday is the important Monday while the humble fellow talking about it hardly will have a Monday at all! Crap! And it is no longer tonight when the temperature will drop; no indeed, it is during the overnight. They have given us a new word, which, in all fairness, I must say I rather like. During the overnight I refused to go to bed.
Furthermore, the weather no longer changes, say from rain to snow or snow to rain. Now it transitions from rain to snow and transitions from snow to rain. I want to smack people, especially pretentious people, who seem to think their language is more elegant if they use the bigger word. Monday the weather will be transitioning from winter-like temperatures to something else! I wonder if these people talk this way in all areas of the country? Probably. In all areas of their lives? I suppose so.
Another word I am sick of hearing is tracking! Not only weather people, excuse me, meteorologists, spend there air time explaining what weather systems they are tracking, but the man and woman at the main news desks are now also tracking the breaking news, especially when the coverage is transitioning from one part of the country or world to another.
While I am at the language level of the news, there is one station that has turned its call letters into an adjective with which they modify every detail of their reporting: WLEX 18. WLEX 18's Bill Meck, as if we might forget who he represents, or WLEX 18's Mobile Newsroom. Every line, every sentence, and so it goes. I have studied WKYT's use of the same verbal tag and they do not do it nearly as often. I have the feeling that they think we are mindless automatons who, if we hear their name often enough (we can't avoid seeing it either since it is always down in the lower left corner of the screen!) will automatically turn to them. "Must watch LEX 18! for their Big Story!" And their BIG story could be the deaths of seven people in a train/truck accident or the rescue of a cow from a ditch. Sometimes some little words do not work well either when every beginning story is classified as BIG! If you call everything "big," you make everything in that category equal whether it really is or not.
All right, I write these things because Mary is tired of hearing me yell at the TV. Sometimes, I put the control on pause, then hit fast forward once so that I can watch the person on the screen speaking slowly. That is where those news people who practice before mirrors with odd lip movements really reveal themselves. I could tell you who to check but that would take away the fun of discovery. However, as we were watching the 11 news broadcast tonight, I saw a truly terrifying thing. Keenan Singleton, a personable young man, had just finished his segment and was standing there beaming at the camera. Apparently, though, he thought the camera was off as he moved to his left, for in an instant the smile disappeared as did he. But I caught it! The smile was in place; it was gone! He dropped it immediately, wiped it off. Chilling! I replayed the segment to show Mary, and it was as if a different person had taken over his face. Even she was impressed. I may find it difficult to quit and go to bed during this overnight, having thought of that mask. He was there again at the end of the broadcast, smiling at his colleagues, and again at us. Smiling broadly.