Tragic end to banter and bons mots
The world of morning tv news is a closed book to me, a locked room, a sealed vault. The idea of tv news in the morning makes me feel queasy, sort of like chocolate cake for breakfast. This is why I didn’t know Charlie Rose was a big noise in morning tv. I thought he was a mystifyingly big noise in public tv chat shows late at night. Apparently he covered both ends of the day, which just goes to show what weirdly low standards we have in the US…as if we needed more evidence of that.
Gayle King, Norah O’Donnell, and Charlie Rose built “CBS This Morning” from a dusty franchise into a lively, news-focused broadcast, primarily around the banter and bon mots they shared as the show’s genial hosts.
Bons mots, please; adjectives agree with nouns in French. But anyway, see what I mean? Ugh – banter and bad jokes from “genial” people at dawn; shoot me now.
Anyway, point is, no bons mots this morning.
On Tuesday morning, Mr. Rose was absent, and Ms. King and Ms. O’Donnell were left to deliver the news that he had been accused by at least eight women of making crude sexual advances.
“None of us ever thought that we’d be sitting at this table in particular and telling this story,” Ms. King said grimly. “But here we are.”
Being ungenial.
The backstage drama of morning television rarely makes it on air in a genre that thrives on affability and studied ease.
But on Tuesday, “CBS This Morning” viewers witnessed an extraordinary public reckoning. The show’s producers devoted the opening 10 minutes of the show to an unvarnished account of the allegations that have been made against Mr. Rose, including a snippet from a media critic, James Warren, who said that the veteran broadcaster’s career was “probably toast.”
CBS fired him later in the morning.
You know, here’s another thing. He’s 75. Can you imagine a woman being one of the hosts of that show or any other show like it at age 75? It is to laugh. For men, age is added gravitas; for women, age is ewwwwwwwwwwww gross get out of here.
(Mind you, not absolutely all men. It hasn’t given Trump any more goddam gravitas.)
As a wave of harassment claims has cascaded across industries, news organizations have increasingly faced the delicate task of covering allegations against their own employees.
Mark Halperin of NBC News, the former New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier and Michael Oreskes, National Public Radio’s top editor, are among the prominent media figures to be accused of sexual misconduct. On Monday, The New York Times suspended Glenn Thrush, one of its White House correspondents, after the website Vox published an article in which four women described him engaging in inappropriate sexual behavior.
And since then people have been pointing out Glenn Thrush’s relentless obsession with Clinton’s emails. Makes ya think.
Technically, if you’re using a different language in an English sentence, the foreign phrasing should be italicized
Except for ones that are so naturalized that they’re not fully foreign any more? But then in that case maybe the rule about adjectives doesn’t apply? I wondered about that.
I italicized that one where I say it myself, just to be on the safe side.
Well, Miriam-Webster and the OED aside, we both know there’s no real academie anglais, so present me can tell past me to stop being so pedantic.
Aside: I remember you wondering last year about the British penchant for stuffing Rs between vowel sounds, like between India and China. That comes from French, too, and is a phenomenon called elision. The French philosophy of language is that words must flow between consonants and vowels, and they’ll put a consonants between two vowels if it doesn’t naturally exist. The frogs used t, where the English use r.
Actually I think it’s liason, not elision. Anyway, I think it’s pretty neat. Other dialects of English can use glottal stops to the same effect.
But
(The Air Accordion)
Reference: Dire Straits, Walk of Life
Re #5, yes, it’s liaison you mention, the pronunciation of normally unpronounced final consonants when the following word begins with a vowel. French also does have elision, the removal of certain vowel sounds when smooshing words together, for the same purpose, making language sound beautiful. My vocal diction instructor was a stickler about which was which, given that singers often confused the two techniques.
The words “Kyrie eleison” at the beginning of the Mass text are sometimes set as one word, “Kyrieleison”. Some of the choral people used to call that substitution the kyri-elision. :-D
#7: Lovely.
“It hasn’t given Trump any more goddam gravitas.”
There’s more of gravy then of gravitas about him.
(I blame Rrr for this).
Also, what’s wrong with chocolate cake for breakfast…?
Sackbut,
French also inserts a ‘t’ between certain vowel pairs, primarily during subject-verb inversion, such as in questions. It’s that sort of spirit in which the English r-insertion (as beween IndiER and China or BrendER and Eddie) was formed.
I’ve never noted an R-insertion such as IndiER. Local pronunciation here I would have considered more Indiar.
In other words more a long ‘a’ as if you were a softly spoken pirate (O Arrrr). Somewhat similar in fact to a soft rhotic R. Those with a crisper accent (few and far between) would use a decidedly short ‘a’. Who am I kidding. Most New Zealanders would make a random mumbling sound.
Re: #10: Ah, thanks, I had forgotten about that construct. As the “t” is added even in written form, that might explain why the construct might not come up in a class solely about pronunciation.
Re #9, “chocolate cake for breakfast”
Serial rapist Bill Cosby had a routine by that name that I can no longer enjoy.
Yes, many languages “don’t like” hiatus—two sequential vowels, as when one word ends in a vowel and the next begins with a vowel.
Goddam hiatophobes.
#13
Or the word hiatus.
That could be taken a couple of different ways, couldn’t it?
They didn’t think the guy was a harasser or they didn’t think they’d ever be allowed to talk about it.
Wonder which it was.
Seth, #4. I think that the ‘r’ inclusion has less to do with France and more with lazy speakers not putting a pause between words where the first ends in a vowel and the second begins with one. Saying “India and China’ doesn’t require the ‘r’ sound, whereas IndiaandChina’ as one word does. The latter also tends to do away with the ‘d’ from ‘and’, so the whole comes out as ‘IndiaranChina’.
AoS, now you’re starting to talk like a Kiwi! The nation that bought the world fushandchups.
Actually moving the mouth while
gabblingtalking. Optional.I don’t think it’s “lazy” speakers, so much as it’s… speakers. All languages have examples of sounds changing in certain environments.
My Korean teacher has mentioned this several times: “This sound changes here to make the word easier to pronounce.” (The “lazy speakers” explanation.)
I always think, “It wouldn’t have been harder for me to pronounce before the sound change. I guess it was only hard for Koreans?”