A Christmas Irony

While hunger is a very real problem in this country now (an estimated 1 out of 7 of us are on food stamps), I need to pick another bone with - who else - our eminent news source, CNN, about its choice of finding the right words, or in this case pictures, to accurately describe the situation of, well, anything.

In brief:  Don't use an overweight kid to describe starvation.  

But why?  Don't fat kids get hungry, too?  

Of course.  I'm not belittling the fact that while more of us are going hungry, there's even more of us with expanding waistlines, becoming the fattest nation on the planet.  Out of this abundance, we are still worried about our kids having enough to eat.  I must also point out that, perhaps, overweight kids are probably in more danger of being both fat and hungry at the same time, since cheap food is also quite fattening.  How easy is it to spend a few bucks off the Dollar Menu at McD's and feed your entire brood for less than ten bucks?  Yup, that easy.  When money is tight and you need to feed a lot of mouths, the options diminish quickly.

But most folks can't get past the meaning of the picture of a fat kid:  Fat equals full.  Skinny equals starved.  When you're coming down to advertising your product, as CNN must do like all other businesses, we are being presented with an irony, even if it may turn out to be true.  Fat kids in need of more food?  Isn't there something better out there than a stock photo of a child sitting in front of an empty plate, probably looking at the buffet just behind the camera crew?  

CNN Needs Copywriters, Part 2

Grammar police?  Grammar Nazi?  I don't care what you think of me.  This is basic Grammar 101, people.  Peta is not a word.  PETA is an acronym and should be capitalized as such.  Peta vs. Pita?  That organization would probably love to be confused with a meatless food that is dipped in all types of vegan-friendly hummus and Baba Ghannouj.

When folks start seeing these mistakes on the front page of a "dependable" news source's website, it means it's okay for us little people too.  Details, shmetails!  YOU KNOW WHAT I MEANT, RIGHT?  (No, I don't.)

Finding typos should not be this easy (or fun).

CNN Needs Copywriters, Part 1

I find a typo every day on this damn site.  CNN, please get someone who knows the difference between by, buy and bye.  It's really not. that. hard.

What do you want to hear?

Good morning, dear readers!  I have a nine-hour work day ahead of me, so alas, I must be brief.  But what I found while ambling along my normal news outlets (yes, even someone like me writing about current affairs gets stuck in a rut... stuck in a rut... stuck in a rut) made me pretty darn upset, and I must share with you before typing the day away.

U.S. figure skating Olympian Johnny Weir was mocked by some French-Canadian announcers during his short routine in Vancouver, saying that he might have "lost points due to his costume and body language," suggesting he should take a gender test, and also suggesting he should compete in the women's competition.  They go so far to suggest that his demeanor sets a bad example to other male skaters and that they'll "end up like him."  They later issued an apology.

These comments are bad enough from a pair of national announcers broadcasting to the entire world, but what enraged me were the quotes from Johnny's response that CNN and People.com decided to publish.

I first read about the controversy at Celebitchy, which is one of my favorite gossip blogs - they write smart, they're witty, and they're not nasty and defacing pictures with grade-school MSPaint like Perez Hilton does.  The comments that Celebitchy published were taken from Entertainment Weekly, and Johnny was quite gracious in his response to the "jokes."  He didn't even ask for an apology or for their firings and says he believes in free speech.  The quotes used on the gossip blog showed him to be a well-spoken man.

However.  I opened CNN.com today and saw the headline:  "Skater responds to mockery."  Hey, CNN picked it up a day later!  I opened it up and started reading, and was sorely disappointed in the quotes that CNN chose to take from People.com's article.  In addition, the hyperlink provided to the original article was broken, and that just ticks me off - a lack of attention to detail on a national news outlet.  It's just as bad as misspelling something on the front page, which CNN does quite often, I might add.  But here's the quote that finishes off the article:

"It wasn't these two men criticizing my skating, it was them criticizing me as a person, and that was something that really, frankly, pissed me off," Weir told reporters. "Nobody knows me. ... I think masculinity is what you believe it to be."

Doesn't he sound like a whiny kid now?  What gives?  Sure, we've all heard the nickname "Johnny Weird" for his flamboyant style and Lady Gaga gestures, but he's also a fine skater and a decent human being, and what was quoted might lead you to believe that he's calling for those broadcasters' careers on a shiny, fabulous silver platter.  All I know is, the man handled himself just fine, and taking two quotes from the press conference shed two very different lights on him.

In my job as a medical transcription, one of the best pieces of advice was to question.  Question what you are hearing.  Listen to it again and again and be sure you are typing what the doctor is saying.  If he's saying something that doesn't make sense, research the heck out of it and alert medical records if there is an inconsistency.  If a doctor puts in an order for a surgical note but starts dictating a consultation, I don't format it as a surgical note - I would format it as a consultation.

This is probably the best advice I could give the general public about approaching what they read and see in the media.  Question.  Question it from all angles before passing judgment - or even if you pass judgment at all.  Don't assume you know something just because they wore a pink tassel on a skating costume and assume they're hermaphrodites (which, incidentally, Lady Gaga was also accused of "tucking," to which she wouldn't even deign a response to that rumor. Good for her.)  It's these little jokes that start as a drop in the pond, but grow to bigger waves as they pass through the general population in so many ways... what if a kid listened to those announcers and thought it was funny to question someone's gender every time they didn't fit society's definition of a male or female?  Even though they thought it was funny, they should have saved it for the comedy club open-mic night, if at all.

Sounding Off

Perusing the online news this morning, I found some interesting tidbits that make me wonder why we listen to them at all. Truly, the more I dig into American media's take on newsworthy items, the more I uncover that there is a pattern we do not like to admit. To wit (in no apparent order):

1.) Vanessa Hudgens, a 19-year-old actress, claims she's found the key to a great relationship: "If you really love someone, you shouldn't have to work at it." Even worse, she told this to CosmoGirl!, which means a bunch of teeny boppers who are clamoring for love advice are looking to this twit and actually going to listen to her. Look, she IS a twit, because she's 19 and she and her boyfriend, Zac Efron, will be broken up sooner or later because - gasp! - they didn't work at their relationship. Girl doesn't know what she's talking about. The reason why I think so many people are dissatisfied in their relationships is that they get so comfortable in them that they forget to do all the little things that made us fall in love in the first place. Ladies start forgoing the makeup and guys forget that we used to like love notes written once in a blue moon. You refuse to learn new things about each other, which is what falling in love was all about: the new, the awkward, the undiscovered. If there's nothing left to discover, what's the point? So, kids, please do not listen to a Hollywood tartlet who thinks love is easy. Remember, no one likes an easy woman!

2.) Found this ditty on CNN today, and while it's relatively an unremarkable bit, I started to get that weird, uncomfortable feeling that they wrote the article for all the wrong reasons. Not only is the headline a bit misleading, but it also highlights the human panic that might be induced by something that we can't even control. In short, the Easter Island statues are in danger because of record numbers of tourists visiting the tiny, 10 x 15 mile island. All right, I can understand that tourists walking on these things would accelerate the process, but sun, surf, winds and humidity? That has nothing to do with record numbers of tourists. Is anything truly resistant to Mother Nature? To be honest, I'm more worried about preserving this climate for my daughter and her children than saving the Easter Island statues from the elements. It's similar to the idea that we think all forest fires are dangerous: it's actually the way the forest cleanses itself. To be sure, a fire started by human hands rather than nature (lightning) may have different implications, but we all choose to live somewhere that is particularly vulnerable to the earth's rages: Flooding plains, insatiable heat and dryness, unbearable cold, tornado valleys, venomous creatures, earthquakes. Everyone has to deal with something; it's all about your priorities. Love to visit Easter Island; not a priority if Mother Earth gets to it first, though.

3.) CNN is a pretty popular American media outlet, and I don't know if I should be surprised or not about this: Earlier this morning, I found a headline on the Gmail Ig homepage, and the BBC reported that a man in Kentucky shot four people at a plant before killing himself after an argument with his supervisor. BBC = British Broadcasting Corporation. Erm... I checked CNN to see if they got wind yet. Nothing. I went back to the Gmail Ig page and found the New York Times had picked up on it. Not until an hour or more later did CNN post something on their front page. How the heck did the BBC get to this first? Maybe it's because they were fascinated with the fact that the man was able to go home, retrieve his own firearm, and return to work with no one suspecting. My ideas about gun control and gun ownership are null and void here, but I know most European countries are fascinated with the fact that U.S. civilians have a right to arm themselves. That probably has nothing to do with the BBC reporting on it first, but you don't hear much about school and workplace shootings in Britain, that's for sure.

I'm just glad the BBC still gives the U.S. some kind of air time on their media pages. The problem with U.S. media is this: If something happens overseas and the U.S. doesn't hear about it, does that mean it's not news? I had a conversation in college about the tree in the woods conundrum, and one of my professors argued that in order for a sound to exist, the soundwaves had to hit an eardrum. Therefore, if a tree fell in the forest and no one was around to hear it, there was no sound. I didn't have much of an answer to that. But now I ask, what if the person is deaf? Go chew on that, dear readers, and please let me know your thoughts.

While We're Making Up Words... Does "Dragee" Count?

I guess I should try to make up my own. Along with such American terminology such as bling and truthiness, the newest rage is hypermiling, in light of $4 gallon of gas that has hit the nation swiftly, with no chance of decelerating.

Granted, maybe I've started a few hypermiling ways of my own. I usually don't go out more than three days during the week, and I try to combine my errands so I don't have to run out piecemeal every day. I moved from California to avoid the idling process of stop and go traffic (ok, that's not really a tip, but I do a lot less idling). And since I've started driving my husband's sporty little manual transmission car when I get the chance, I started shifting my automatic transmission into neutral every time I approach a red light or stop sign. Slow acceleration and braking are apparently gas savers, too.

The one that bothers me the most, however, is the fact that on the thruway, there are folks who take advantage of the drag that cars create in front of them, and coast along on their bumpers. Taking advantage of someone's drag is fuel saving for the hypermiler, yes, but you are causing the dragee (made-up word) to lose much more fuel. It's a selfish move, effectively; not only are you making the person in front of you pay more for their gas, but you're also not cutting back on the pollution you create, which is honestly the REAL reason why we should be hypermiling.

Anywho. These people drive me nuts. I frequently drive between parents' home and my home town now, so I get plenty of thruway driving, and I hate the action of drifting. These people make my blood pressure rise, and I tend to get anxious, angry, and I can usually effectively shake them by slowing down or weaving between traffic (neither good options on a thruway).

Unfortunately, this hypermiling craze is not going to fix the real problem, which is that energy costs will rise regardless of how many times we shut off our engines while driving on the road (no matter how illegal it is in many states). We drive gas-guzzling SUVs that, we're just realizing now, are hard to sell in favor of a smaller car. People are purposefully running out of gas on the road to get a free gallon of gas. An article newly minted on CNN says that GM is closing four pickup and SUV plants, build smaller and more efficient cars, and even dispose the Hummer brand.

Which I say: ABOUT TIME. I never really bought into the SUV craze. I love my little zippy cars. In fact, I'm actually considering purchasing a manual transmission vehicle for my next car, when my winter beater bites the dust (bites the snow? Bites the salt? For Nor'easters, it's all the same!) because I've learned to effectively watch my RPMs and learn how to upshift from a low RPM to save gas. My husband does a great job in teaching me how to get my miles to stretch, especially since he has to drive an hour to work (this translates into $500 of gas per month right now, which will inevitably rise as the months go on).

For GM to make this move is smart and beneficial to the American consumer market. Our European counterparts are probably doing the point-and-laugh right now, because not only is public transportation a fact of life there, but $9 gas is as well. We've got it made with $4 gas! Furthermore, this is the precise response that a large employer of working-class citizens needed to make in order to keep their appeal to the American consumer, instead of watching them walk off their lots in favor of the more fuel-efficient Japanese brands. Maybe this will also get the annoying tailgaiters off my bumper too.

In order to keep this fresh and on topic of how the media figures into this whole brouhaha, I just like the fact that Americans can come up with terminology and let it slip into mainstream talk. In fact, most civilized countries these days are keen on making up their own vocabulary that separates it from the established language of the land (look up "cosplay"; also see "bloody," "bugger," "cheesed off," etc. in British colloquialisms). The evolution of language has forever been changed by media - once the written word became printed word, the media could reach legions of people in ways no one ever dreamed. Then the printed word became the electronic word, and the term "globalization" seems ever present in our vocabulary now. Not only do adults make up their own terms, but so do the teenage population.

When you think about it, who doesn't make up their own language once in a while? Parents do it with their kids. Pet owners do it with their dogs. In fact, the beauty of language is that it's all made up by us. While there's a standard to help us understand each other, there's also the fact that humans at some point made it up in the first place. When you hear English and Mandarin spoke in tandem, you really understand how language evolution seems so easy to do.

March D.U.H.

Greetings from Seattle! I'll be here for the next few days on the trusty laptop, so thanks for joining me on my travels.

Seen on the front page of CNN.com, 11:08 AM PST:

"Developing Story: President Bush says 'it's clear our economy has slowed.'"

No kidding, man. Like the foreclosures at an all-time high, the job slump, and credit woes aren't enough to tip us off? Is this really the only news CNN has to offer us as urgent, developing news in the U.S.?

I do have a screenshot to prove it, but Blogger isn't being nice this morning to me. I'll try to post it later.