Monday, November 05, 2007

Question of the Day

Why are people who can't pronounce antarctica paid big bucks to be on TV news shows?

42 comments:

Anonymous said...

For the same reason people who say 'nu-ku-lar' are President?

mybillcrider said...

Sigh.

Anonymous said...

That's pretty funny. My wife and I have, as one of our favorite passtimes, the interrupting of one or the other's activities with the urgent announcement of what new horror in vocabulary, syntax, word-order, pronounciation, errant definition and all-out drooling, brain-damaged, dumbass cotton-skulled communication felony some million-dollar-a-year botoxed yak-breathed
studio-dwelling tree sloth parented ignoramus has committed on camera, on microphone, and with ample studytime beforehand, to first grade English.

Ivan G Shreve Jr said...

Heck, half the fun of the evening news was watching Tom Brokaw wrap his consonant-challenged tongue around "Slobodan Milošević".

Anonymous said...

you could creat a whole site with visitors posting the daily gaffs and dopey, stupefying blunders of news readers and it would grow at a million words a day. and that's another thing: these dopes aint just making off the cuff errors. they're reading them. somebody wrote them down first. you could write down "two headed men prefer orange suitcoats three-to-one over garage door openers" and they would read it, plunge forward into the next stupidity with a wide-eyed glare of happy cluelessness and never look back.

Anonymous said...

In re Brokaw: ...or go on about how his father was a member of the Greatest Generation (this last only occasionally on the NBC NIGHTLY NEWS, however). Truly a tool.

Benjie said...

Which brings to mind (at least my mind, and no one knows why) the question of when we decided (via the evening news) on the new pronunciation of "HAIR-essment" as opposed to "her-ASS-ment" of the olden days.

Anonymous said...

What's also fascinating about these drogs is when they learn what they consider to be a really flashy new word and then proceed for the rest of their lives to pronounce it incorrectly. For instance, "Mr. Smith, a pundant at the local newspaper, reports..."

mybillcrider said...

You guys are worse than I am. And it's a real comfort to find that out.

Anonymous said...

Let us not forget Our Glorious Leader trying (and failing) to pronounce Australia. He can certainly get a job as a news twit when he gets out of office.

stilwell

mybillcrider said...

The Fox Evening News, hosted by . . . . The mind boggles.

Anonymous said...

or as kelly bundy used to say "the mind wobbles."

Anonymous said...

Kelly Bundy is probably now a news anchor

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newsreading "The bankrobbers were found to have a ka-shay of firearms in the trunk."

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newsreading "The Mission was founded by Father June Ippero Serra."

mybillcrider said...

It just gets better and better.

Anonymous said...

Just be happy they don't have to spell any of the words they're saying. Can you imagine how awful that would be?

Anonymous said...

Here's an actual log of gaffs my wife Cecily has compiled on her computer.
Demand for automobiles have fallen since May.--KFWB 6/29/04 11:15 a.m

We have been undated with rain. 2/05

A half a brother of Osama bin Laden says he doesn't believe Osama is dead. KFWB 7/4/05

From a participant in I Want to be a Hilton reality show: [he's been] learnin' all this stuff about etiquacy--you know, how to be etiquette.

12-13-05 KPPC piece about the Iraqi elections: They're hoping for 40% Sunni participitation--uh, precipitation--in the elections.

Traffic report on KFWB: There's a slowdown on Vermont--uh, Vermin--(laughs) excuse me, Vernon.

On one of the numerous illiterate, badly spoken ads on KFWB, the announcer says that a mortgage loan will amortirize...

Authoritative announcer on KFWB just informed people that if they were planning to go to Monterey they would find disruption because of renovation and construction on Canary Row, made famous by the writer John Steinback. 8/13/06

KFWB 9/11/06. No disrespect intended but the newsman really did say, regarding a 5th anniversary memorial service: "The moment of silence quickly gave way to the sobbing of the 2749 people killed when the plane hit."

KFWB 9/12/06 talking about extravagant things to buy for your pets: "But wait, before you cough up a full bar--uh, fur bar--listen to this..." She never did get to "fur ball," which I'm sure was on her page. I know people throw up after drinking a lot, but it must take a prodigious binge to get someone to cough up a full bar.

KFWB 12/13/06 Their announcers are pretty bad, but today's booboos came so thick and fast I couldn't remember them all. The woman did babble on about Princess Diana's fatal death while her car was being chased by pah-pah-rah-zee. She also consistently says "nucular" and mispronounces Schwarzenegger--he's our governor, for Pete's sake, and she's feeding us the news every day. Wouldn't you think her bosses would have a word with her?

KFWB 12/18/06 Regarding the killer of several women in London: "The suspect's name is 37-year-old Tom Stevens."

mybillcrider said...

I love all these. And to think those people are making more money that I ever dreamed of.

Anonymous said...

i think you mean THAN you ever dreamed of. you could be newsman material, son.

Anonymous said...

Not pronouncing foreign names doesn't throw me much, as I can't pronounce them either, what gets me is how often they say, The largest state California. What happened to Alaska and Texas. I think they were talking about some other aspect of the state, population perhaps, I don't know. But I hear this all the time on the news. I've heard people in Texas say it. Yikes. We're pissed that Alaska took our place, but as the old joke goes, won't be that big when the ice melts.
Joe

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newsreading: "He described it as just so much floxum and jexsum."

Anonymous said...

The Missus informs me that I have slandered the woman who mispronounced the name of the founder of the California Missions. She informs me it was worse than I have described. The correct mispronounciation would be Father June IhPAIR-o SerrAH

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newsreading "It created an whole new genair of art."

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newsreading: "There were countless myriads of occasions when he could have safely terminated the chase."

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newsreading: "It is pending, purse-u-went to the investigation."

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newsreading: "The abandoned house was found to be full of feralded cats."

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newreading: (The reporter, outside, in a wind, alternately looking behind him and back to the camera, pointing all the while at various points rearward) "The tornado then cloved an erratic swatch dramatically to the left of us, all the while missing virtually all the houses next to us with the exeption of the one i am now standing in that is no longer here." (Clearly an award winner in the Weather News category.)

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newsreading: "Two people were injuried in the fatal attack of a mountain lion today in Sierra Madre who was killed by the quick action of a Sheriffs' Deputy not on duty. Fortunately none of the injuries resulted in their deaths, except to the mountain lion. Here with the details....." (A whopping dose of LSD ingested by the newsman and the audience probably would have actually made this report a little clearer.)

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newsreading: "Waves, high winds, and darkness pounded the shore here all night here last night in an effort to bring down the houses you see here still standing here after their onslaught that brought them to no avail. We talked to one of the owners and here's what he had to say." (Things had to get clearer from this point.)

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newsreading: (At the beach, very windy, a hurricane - perhaps - on the way) "What forecasters fear is that if the hurricane hits, the storm insurgency could sweep a quarter mile inland, over and above the wind and the waves and the torrential downfall."

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newsreading: "Traffic accidents at this spot could then theoretically increase expidentially."

Brent McKee said...

"Why are people who can't pronounce antarctica paid big bucks to be on TV news shows?"

Because the look purty - or in the case of Katie Couric, perky.

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newsreading: "The elephant will then be transported out by jumbo jet, which, no pun intended, has to be a happy ending any way you look at it." (The Mayan calendar is clearer than this.)

Benjie said...

Apparently, Les Nessman lives.

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newsreading: "The problem with global warming, as the watchmakers on the wall continue to warn us, is not so much that it affects people not only thousands of miles away, but also that it affects people right here in our own neighborhoods and communities. Because that's what global means: it means everybody. Only the people on the moon can afford to not pay attention. And we are not on the moon. We are on the globe. And we cannot leave. And we are warming. Global warming means the global warmimization of you and me. And that's just the way it is. Tracy?..." (Before you have to ask, yes.I have the video of this communicational gorefest.)

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newsrreading: "The fact remains we are becoming an increasingly...dij...diji...dijiTALicized society."

Anonymous said...

I will never forget the Boston TV host who was about to show a great way to prepare "your Passover ham".

Jerry House

Anonymous said...

Great Moments In Newsreading: "The police said it was not so much a crime as it was mischeeviousness on the part of the boys."

Cap'n Bob said...

I don't even know why they can't capitalize Antarctica.

mybillcrider said...

Nobody loves a smartass, Cap'n.

Anonymous said...

here here