Friday, August 10, 2012

Witty Banter Should Be Witty


By definition, [witty] has to do with something that is either said or done that is quite amusing and/or very clever.  To the extent of my understanding, it is more often used to describe something amusing than something strictly intellectual, such as what is supposed to be the witty banter between members of a newscast team that is often used to fill in the gaps between segments.

Yes, I am building up to another rant about the quality of our local newscasts.  For when one of the anchors on one of our local newscasts mentioned something about the wife of a former colleague giving birth to another Ole Miss fan, the other anchor quipped, “Ole Miss?  Well, maybe we can make a Cardinals fan out of him.”

Um, just in case you are as witty as she is, [Ole Miss] is a university that is mostly known for its football team (debatable, I know) while the Cardinals she was referring to was either the [St. Louis Cardinals] or the [Springfield Cardinals], with both of them being professional baseball teams.  In other words, we have a true apples and oranges situation here.  Okay, I suppose I should give her credit for keeping it sports related.

The next example doesn’t have anything to do with witty banter.  For it is about one of our local reporters reporting that a serious wreck occurred a couple of miles south of High Landville instead of Highlandville.

Since I am really not all that picky, this next example won’t have anything to do with witty banter, either.  For it is about one of our local sportscasters announcing that [Jaime Garcia] would make a rehab start with the Springfield Cardinals before joining the big league team after suffering a serious injury to his left shoulder earlier in the season, and pronouncing his name as Hay-may Garcia instead of High-me—even after conducting an on-camera interview with the pitcher!  No, I didn’t catch if he mispronounced his name during the interview, but it has taken him at least four tries since to get it right.

Keeping with sports, we have a local sportscaster who dreams of making it to the [big time], and it just might be that he is not as clueless as I give him credit for being.  For while presenting a story about the NFL wanting to make football (the real kind) an Olympic sport, a couple of the ESPN sportscasters put up a list of NFL players who were born someplace other than the U.S., and included on that list was [Tim Tebow] and [Hines Ward].

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, it is true that Tebow was born in the Philippians while his parents were doing missionary work there, and Ward was born in South Korea while his father was stationed there with the U.S. Army.  However, both were actually raised around real football in America when what the ESPN idiots were going for was NFL players who had grew up in a much different culture and started playing the game at a much older age than what most NFL players do.

No, I am not expecting perfection.  In fact, I find it quite endearing when a newscaster messes up and then corrects the mistake with nothing more than merely a roll of their eyes, and if there is time for not-so-witty banter, there is certainly time to start correcting the things that are driving me nuts.  Yeah, I really do need to get a life.

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