Okay, okay. I know this is EXTREMELY far-out, but bear with me here.
For those of you who don’t know who the esteemed Corey Flintoff is, he’s one hell of a great writer and reporter.
Here’s my little issue. In the last few weeks, it appears to ME that Mr. Flintoff has been replaced with a cleverly produced near-perfect copy !!!
How can I tell? The timbre of his voice has changed. I can’t put my finger on what’s happened, all I know is that this is NOT my Mom’s Corey Flintoff.
I want answers. I want them right now. Fellow NPR-Doper’s I turn to thee. At roughly 5:00 p.m. EST each day, are we or are we NOT being hoodwinked???
I can’t even sleep any more. It’s eating me up alive. As I said, I really do respect this person’s work immensely, so don’t go and tell me to write to him and ask him if he’s been replaced by a near-perfect copy, ok?
Besides. The near-perfect copy would lie. :eek:
Anyone else hearing a marked difference in this person’s speaking voice?
I thought he was younger, too. Not like he’s in Carl Kasell territory, but there seems to be a minimum age to be a newsreader at NPR.
Speaking of the great Carl, could some of our pledges be used to buy that guy some Polygrip? Jeeze, listening to his dentures clack all morning drives me nuts!
So, I’m at the NPR bios, ostensibly to see how John Ydstie and Snigdha Prakash spell their names, but I’m really checking out The Babes of NPR.
Well, hello, Fiona Ritchie!
I also noticed that both Diane Rehm and Bailey White are much younger than you’d ever guess from their voices. (Has Rehm had a stroke? She sounds like it. ) Okay, I knew how old Bailey White is and also how CUTE she is, but she still sounds ninety.
Okay, so I’ve done the EXACT same thing for Snigdha Prakash. And Mandalit Del Barco (not sure if I got that one right, but I’m too lazy to check it again). But I figured John would spell his last name with an “I”!
She has not had a stroke. She has a neurological disorder called spasmodic dysphonia that affects the speach centre. She gets treatments for it and every once in a while she sounds great. AFAIK, the disorder will only get worse as time goes on.
That’s really unfortunate :(. I think she’s the best interviewer working right now (including Ted Koppel, who’s also terrific but not quite as incisive IMHO). I’d been listening to her for years on WAMU in DC and was so glad she’d finally gone national. I hope with treatment she has many more productive years ahead of her.
Which would explain why it sounds like somebody else has been doing her promos lately (I haven’t heard her show in a while). And why she’s looks to be about my age (based on when she became a lowly assistant producer) but sounds older.
I can only listen to her on the net or in certain places while in my car because the Chicago station doesn’t carry her.
I know that it’s usually considered bad form to start a thread and then not post into it again, but you’re all doing such a bang-up job and besides, I stated my theory in the OP.
From what I’m reading, irony abounds at NPR. They have the best stuff and the worst vocal chords to support that stuff.
There is no justice. I also awoke with this awful feeling that SOMEONE who writes or produces for “All Things Considered” is a Doper… :eek:
Cartooniverse
Hahahahahahaaaaaa!!! I thought I was the only one who this drove nuts. I find myself changing the station or turning the volume down because of it. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Kasell seems to be a nice man and a consumate professional, but man, that clicking, clacking, and snapping drives me up a wall.
Thank goodness Mr. Kasell doesn’t have too much of a role on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, but who in their right mind would want his voice on their answering machine, and how is that a prize?
Welcome to the SDMB, dwbern. We prefer that people not revive really old threads, which we call zombies, so I’m going to lock this one. Hope you’ll find other, more recent, threads that you’ll want to participate in as well.
In the meantime, you might want to head over to ATMB (About This Message Board), where there’s some info about the rules and etiquette of life hereabouts.
) Okay, I knew how old Bailey White is and also how CUTE she is, but she still sounds ninety.