Abbott and Costello

Abbott and Costello (NBC Radio)

Carol Costello is the anchor of the morning edition of CNN's Newsroom. She’s sexy and wholesome and outspoken. One of her editorials was “'Sexy' clothes don’t excuse sexual violence,” CNN, 10/9/14) If she hadn’t chosen news she might have been a candidate for the Playboy show The Girls Next Door, a reality program which aired from 2005-2010. John Berman and Kate Bolduan follow her at ll:00 AM with At This Hour and one wonders how her ratings would fare if she had a partner. Calling all Abbotts with experience as news anchors. Imagine a new 9:00 AM Newsroom feature called Abbott and Costello. News is a competitive business and you have to use everything you’ve got in the arsenal of promotion. It’s lucky Carol Costello isn’t Carol Amos, as the natural choice for a sidekick would be Andy and as CNN Newsroom with Amos and Andy would not exactly pass muster in our PC era. Greg Abbott is the governor of Texas and he has the kind of chiseled Mount Rushmore worthy face that would make him a great news anchor after retirement. He wouldn’t be the first politician who went on to a career in news. Look at George Stephanopoulos who is now an anchor for ABC. However, though Abbott has the right name for the job, his politics (which include taking the fight to display the l0 commandments on the capital building in Austin to the Supreme Court) are a bit too right of center for CNN, and a team with a name like Stephanopoulos and Costello lacks the mellifluous alliterative sound of say Berman and Bolduan. Right now Costello is holding her own, after years of experience as a reporter in the field, but it’s hard to remain "king of the road," to quote Roger Miller. Tom Costello is a correspondent for NBC and when and if Carol Costello’s ratings start to sag, CNN might consider ramping up their ammo by instituting CNN Newsroom with Costello and Costello.

CNN vs Fox and the Execution Tapes

photo of eyeglasses from Auschwitz (German Federal Archives)

What is the difference between showing films of the allies liberation of concentration camps with their piles of corpses, body parts, teeth, glasses and other artifacts and the decision of Fox News to show a still of the burning Jordanian pilot on TV and the whole video on its web site, (“Jordan executes 2 prisoners after ISIS video shows pilot being burned alive,”Fox News, 2/4/15). CNN has taken a holier than thou attitude about the showing of such violent videos, feeling that they are propaganda for ISIS(“Why does CNN refuse to show ISIS video?” CNN, 2/3/15). But propaganda about what? How could the sight of masked ISIS soldiers looking on while their captor is burned alive in a cage be looked at as positive propaganda? Films of animal cruelty have yet to attain such heights of brutality. Granted in the l9th hangings were forms of public entertainment. But there are still no shortage of those who deny the reality of the Holocaust and though it’s hard to believe, there are going to be apologists for ISIS somewhere who will only be chastened by the reality of horrifying videos that the organization itself produces. For Heidegger one of the means by which a human being can attain an authentic existence is through the awareness of death. The CNN anchor Carol Costello made the point that the network will show a plane crash, but not show pictures of a human being actually dying. Sure these are tough calls since there are instances where the broadcasting of such images is an invasion of privacy that takes away from a sacrosanct moment in human life. Media outlets like CNN and the Times gain credibility by creating an aura of equanimity that eschews sensationalism. But is there any point in hiding searing images of torture, mass murder and genocide? Are we sparing the victims and the families, or the perpetrators of these atrocities?

Newspeak

Have you noticed the odd way that newscasters have of accenting varying words. One of the most common forms of poetic expression is iambic pentameter. Shakespeare employed it in his plays. Newspeak  was the language Orwell created for the repressive society he envisioned in l984. But it’s a good word to use to describe how television announcers communicate. It’s not iambic pentameter, but it has definite cadences that revolve around emphasizing certain words and whether you’re listening to CNN or NPR or CBS or even Al Jazeera, it has the tendency to make all the news, whether it concerns a lost pet or plane, sound remarkably the same. There’s an old neuroscience conjecture that if you put a monkey in front of a typewriter long enough he will write Hamlet. Can the same thing be said about newscasters? Sometimes the emphasis seems arbitrary. Every sentence seems to require a key word. For instance let’s say a CNN’s anchor like Carol Costello or Chris Cuomo wants to say “the cat is out of the bag.” They won’t just iterate the words like you or I. They will probably emphasize the last two words of the sentence, “the bag.”  Let’s take another sentence an anchor might say, like “Ray Rice punched his then fiancé.” “Then” would obviously be the nominee in that particular sentence. Or here’s another possible sentence a newscaster might read, “Sources at the Pentagon have indicated that the ‘no boots on the ground’ policy may soon be reversed.” You’d think the emphasis might fall on “sources” or “Pentagon,” but “indicated” is clearly the word that punctuates the mood that the sentence creates.  Newspeak is definitely a language that one has to learn like French or Spanish and like all language it contains its own river of meanings that lies under the superficial veneer that the words create once they are encoded into a particular syntax. For instance, French communicates a certain pertness (as opposed to the perkiness of Newspeak), verging on rudeness or abruptness; there ‘s a hyberbolic sardonicism to French. When a French man or woman can’t do something that you require, they say “Je suis desole,” which means they are not desole at all and you can go fuck yourself since you’re not getting squat. Newscasters are totally the opposite of the French. There hardly a negative personality amongst them and every word out of their mouths is an expression of interest and enthusiasm. When Carol or Chris speaks to one of their correspondents out in the field, she or he is incredibly interested in everything the correspondent has to say, no matter how insignificant it is. Neither Chris nor Carol would probably ever dream of uttering the English equivalent of “Je suis desole.” Berlitz is one of the places one goes to learn French, Spanish or Italian, but how does one learn Newspeak. It’s the old nature versus nurture question. Obviously there are some people who are born talking like newscasters. Others start to talk this way after watching too much news and other wannabees attend schools of broadcasting which supposedly will teach you how to be a radio or television announcer. But once you have learned to talk like an announcer, can you ever return to the monotone of normal human speech. Can a pickle be turned back into a cucumber once he or she returns home from announcing headline stories?