Posted by
dovehawk on Saturday, August 05, 2006 3:04:12 PM
Something has bothered me for quite a while. I even prepared a term paper project based on my irritation with it. WOW, it HAS been bothering me a long time!! It's the STUTTERING of TV and radio journalists and talk show hosts, AND POLITICIANS. Actually, it started with the politicians. The first stuttering politician who really irritated me was JESSE... that's right, the great public orator Jesse Jackson! Can you believe it? Maybe it's just me? However, when put to the test of my carefully prepared term paper project, JESSE failed miserably. He definitely fell into the abnormal range for stuttering. In the great tradition of Edgar Allen Poe's words, "I think it was the (EYE) TONGUE!!!"
Everyone stutters, however, in assessing individuals for stuttering, there are specific dysfluent features which are recorded and tallied. A person will either be normal in HIS (note I don't use "his or her", since this irritates me also; I'm perfectly comfortable being included in the "his" bracket even though I am a "her", since my mind is able to abstract out a different connotaion of the word "his", although other more simple-minded & concrete thinkers cannot do this, e.g., women's libbers & the like)-- So, let me begin that sentence again. A person will either be normal in HIS stuttering features, or abnormal. WHOA, Jesse! Get that tongue under control! Do some range of motion exercises with that thing!
So, anyway, this abnormal stuttering behavior seriously bothers me. I've listened to Rush Limbaugh off and on for quite some while, and I would have to say he's really consuming some airtime with what are called "fillers", "revisions", "phrase repetitions", etc., etc. Uh-uh-uh-... That, that, that... I find myself saying, "COME ON, SPIT IT OUT, RUSH!!" A couple of old faves from The McLaughlin Group are now The Beltway Boys. They seem like really genuine guys, but watching their show is like riding in an old clunker that's sputtering down the road the whole way (that rhymes with stuttering). It's a rough ride. Hannity gets a bit tedious as well with mass repetitions as well as the basic phrase reps. I describe Hannity's radio vocal tone as "ratcheting". The TV version is kinder to the eardrum. Dr. Savage, on the other hand, absolutely knows what he wants to say, and says it with a bang. I like that! I can assess the content without being overridden by the sound quality.
Over and above my personal irritation, is my fear that people will stop listening to the content of these stutterer's important words and start turning away because they can't stand all the stuttering (AND INTERRUPTING).
There are always exceptions. It would be GREAT if people would stop listening to such stutterers as JESSE and other perennial tunnel-vision pessimists. Speaking of... Although JOHN KERRY doesn't stutter too much, he does flatten his soft palate and denasalize his voice, perhaps so he can become more like his twin brother Frankenstein. That way all his tunnel-vision pessimism SOUNDS LIKE one long stutter, i.e., [think Frankenstein's voice while reading this Kerry-like sound] "Uhhhhhhhhhh-Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh-Uhhhhhhhhhh" [nice & low in the back of the throat]. Somewhere in that husky-toned drone is content archived back in the jungles of Viet Nam. Maybe he's got the sound of droning aircraft still stuck in his ears. Some of the Viet Nam vets I've met, it seems the weaker types, have some kind of shell shock from that event. I'm not making light of what was a tragic event... nobody wanted to go, not my husband at the time, nor anybody else I knew.
Question: Who wants to go to war??? NO ONE! -- Oh, wait, there's another answer?
Answer: Terrorists want to go to war!!!
STOP STUTTERING NOW!!!.