Okay, You Found Us…

expletive deleted... so while you're here, check out our rants, ravings, snipes and gripes - and let us know what's on your mind.

We Work For Kibble

Win More eBay Auctions

Translator

English flagItalian flagKorean flagChinese (Simplified) flagPortuguese flagGerman flag
French flagSpanish flagJapanese flagRussian flagHindi flagPolish flag
Romanian flagSwedish flagNorwegian flagFilipino flagIndonesian flagHungarian flag
Shop ScreenGuardz.com Today!

Bloggers

Jim Lawter - Opinionator
Six-Eye Jackson - Media Critic
Scrud Kelley - Scam Editor
O. C. DeeDee - List Editor
Broadus - Sponsored Reviews
Hodgepodge Grumblebeak - Graphics Editor
T-Shirt and Razoo Kelley - Common Taters
OmegaSquad – Commentary
Van Clowder - Cat Pix
YOU - Guest Contributors

Recent Comments

source web page: I have been exploring for a bit for any high qua...
Tawnya: Hello terrific blog! Does running a blog like this...
Home income kit revieww: Hello! I realize this is kind of off-topic however...
Iris: I like a biomechanical tattoos. Photo with mechani...
star beauty barber salon: Hi Dear, are you in fact visiting this website o...
fotografia: I really like it when folks get together and share...
Moshe Jubilee: Cool post, thanks so much. Good writing, going to ...
Dan: I have fun with, result in I discovered exactly wh...
click for Source: Remarkable! Its truly awesome paragraph, I have go...
google: Exceptional post however , I was wanting to know i...
Shop SpiritHalloween.com Today!

Look, Saying “Look” is Obnoxious

I’m a TV news junkie at heart. I watch CNN to hear hot stories flogged to death. I watch FOX News for a laugh. I put on C-SPAN for background noise. I used to watch MSNBC daily, but when they fired Don Imus I banned them for life. I even watch local news; some pre-cable TV habits die hard.

Network stations are good for yesterday’s traffic, today’s weather, local who-cares politics, and “human interest” fluff. The no-neck jock does the sports, the mustachioed myopic man does a movie review, the babe does weather, and a racially nondescript duo – usually one older, one younger – reads the Teleprompters.

Cable stations have bigger budgets, but the same basic elements apply. Only instead of presenting local news at 6pm and rerunning edited versions of the same stories at 11pm, these are national news superstations that run 24/7. Sure, they break it up into hourly segments starring different media darlings, but just as newspapers have their editorial slant, so too these superstations push their own ideologies.

I won’t get into which stations are hell-bent to push which political agendas. Instead, I have a beef with ALL of them when it comes to a particular speech mannerism.

What compels so many reporters and commentators to say “Look” at the start of every new thought?

Look, we get it; you’re a hired authority and you’re going to tell us something that we don’t already know. You’re in the loop, you’re insightful, you’re the expert, your opinion counts, blah blah blah. As if your ego isn’t pumped up enough, is it really necessary to look down your nose at us mere mortals by verbally punctuating your superiority?

Look, you might have a point.

Look, you might have a point.

I can understand the argumentative tone in Court TV / truTV commentary, but so much of it sounds condescending instead. Some Weather Channel commentators come across more like your sixth grade teacher, and you might excuse their attitude since they’re repeating the same thing for the umpteenth time to a never-learning classroom full of students. But when the Home Shopping Network starts up, well give us a break!

Educators of the world, did you teach this verbal abomination to our kids? No? Then where are they picking up this trash talk? You can’t blame TV, because like it or not, this time the egg definitely came before the chicken. These people picked up this atrocious habit from somewhere. I have absolutely no proof, but I think that punk Dan Rather may have started it.

It didn’t used to be like this. Walter Cronkite would never have been so rude as to say “Look, that’s the way it is.” And if David Brinkley ever signed off with “Look, good night, Chet…” I think Chet Huntley would have been in his rights to just not respond.

Neil Armstrong would have sounded really aggravated if he had said “Look, that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for Mankind.” Although, after spending 4 days in a gym locker with two other guys, a little aggravation might be understandable. Still, Armstrong had more class than that.

“Look, fourscore and seven years ago…”

“Look, I have a dream…”

“Look, Ich bin ein Berliner”

Starting a sentence with “Look” is a nasty, mindless verbal habit, as lame as repeating “you know?” at the end of every sentence, and akin to saying “uhhh” when nothing better comes to mind. The usage is condescending, obnoxious, argumentative, and low-class. Respected journalism comes from a respectful demeanor. Are you listening, Bill O’Reilly?

Six-Eye Jackson

Related Posts
  • My Clock's Smarter Than Your Clock I hate wearing a watch. Schedules are confining and interrupt the flow of my day. My VCR lets me skirt the rigors of watching TV when the schedules tell me...
  • Hollywood North Gears Up for TV New Season Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: the next best thing to being there. Even with the currencies of the United States and Canada nearing parity, Vancouver offers so many production plusses that...
  • Gutter Graveyards: Tributes or Roadside Distractions? We've all seen them. They line our highways and byways, those clumps of wilting flowers surrounding a weathered photo of some poor victim of bad driving. I call them Gutter...
Related Websites
  • Throw Away your Television? One of my new favorite sites is Getting Rich Slowly. Recently they had guest post about how you can save a bundle by throwing away your TV. In it they...
  • How To Drive Excellent Traffic With Your Digg Even people who are new to IM understand that they need to find a variety of traffic sources to send traffic to their websites. However, when we talk about traffic...
  • Blogging as a Stream of Income I had been writing about my goal of getting my passive income to the point of covering my necessary expenses. I should have substituted "passive income" with "alternative income streams."...

Leave a Reply

 

 

 

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

*

Powered by WebRing.

If you like this post, please consider subscribing to my full feed RSS.