Delightful. I wanna pour her voice over linguini and bury my head in it and OM NOM NOM NOM.
Then there’s Laura Knoy from The Exchange, who is as good looking as she sounds.
I hate Daniel Schorr’s voice; it’s like he’s talking out of a mouth made of fluttering phlegmy gelatin. Blergh.
Correction: I heard her on Weekend Edition this morning. I only caught a little of it, but I have to admit that I really don’t mind her “serious” voice. Go figure.
Then again, as long as the voice is audible I’m unlikely to be bothered by it. Content and to a lesser extent attitude matter appreciably more.
I like Lyden; it’s Jerome McDonald I can’t stand. So much so, that I do not listen to his show, “WorldView”. He can’t conduct an interview, either. He sounds like an intern just thrown in as a sub. He stammers and hesitates and feels his way around a statement. Drives me nuts.
And Dick Gordon is smoother than Jerome, but suffers from the same lack of ability to actually interview someone. His “recaps” of The Story drive me mad. And he interrupts his interviewee a LOT. Grrrr.
Oh, and Tavis Smiley’s voice–talk about smug and righteous–I stopped listening to him long ago…
wow I googled her name to see who she is and what you are talking about. This thread was number 3.
I listened and while not my preference but not as horrible as you made her sound.
I edited the word “fuck” in the thread title to comply with the “no-obscenities-in-thread-titles” rule.
Gfactor
Pit Moderator
Daniel Schorr’s voice used to grate on my ears so bad I would turn the sound down in the car, grumbling. But, then I learned that he was 90 some years old, and an elder statesman of journalism, who has done incredible work. Got over my bother after knowing that, felt like an uninformed doof for not knowing who he was. And, love this, fom the above Wiki:
With Jackie Lyden; She’s got some irritating rhotacism, like Barbara Walters, trouble pronouncing "R"s, but has an interesting past and career. I think NPR hires many of their announcers with an ear toward talent vs absolute radio voice. OK with me, I’d rather have good journalism and content.
Here’s one who drives me nuts: Joanne Silberner, NPR’s medical correspondent. She’s certainly well-qualified, but she sounds like a small girl with a stuffy nose.
That is simple madness. Liane is the best goddamned thing on NPR, which makes her the best goddamned thing on radio. In her absence, Weekend Edition is greatly reduced.
Sirs, I beseech you to maintain decorum----lest anyone forget the fatal outcome of the last Public Radio Riots.
Personally I can do without Linda Warthogger, in part due to an anecdotal (yet entirely credible) report I read somewhere that she’s a bitch, and the remainder because her voice calls to mind a particularly loathsome English teacher of my youth.
I changed the thread title back to the original after some discussion in ATMB.
Gfactor
Pit Moderator
I’ll take any of those voices, just so long as I never have to hear Kojo Nnamdi pronounce his last name again. It sounds like there are 14 a’s in there where he says it. I can get through the entirety of the 12th street tunnel before he is finished.
David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell. With voices like those, who could take them seriously?
I don’t have a problem with Jackie Lyden’s voice. I’d listened to her for years, and when her book came out I decided to flip through it in the bookstore. I was absolutely stunned to see her photo on the back cover. While I am a veritable novice in opera, I am usually able to identify African-American sopranos by the throatiness and huskiness in their vocal deliveries. I heard (and still hear) many of those same traits in Lyden’s voice.
I don’t hear it with Lyden. Though I’ll admit that my eyebrows went up when I read that Sylvia Poggioli was born in Rhode Island. Admittedly, she seems to have spent most of her adult life in Italy, but the accent makes her seem like one of those people who come back from a semester abroad with a British accent. That’s my irrational feeling, anyway.
The NPPer that I can’t listen to is Ira Glass, and his legion of imitators who have adopted his fey, halting, bemused-by-everything style. Gah.
Seconded. (Thirded?)
She sounds like she is going to die, literally, any second.
Rehm’s voice doesn’t bother me. Her personality irritates me.
It’s interesting - on the surface, this thread is simply about which voices irritate us. But really, it’s about form over substance.
NPR has more substance, in my view, than almost any other major media outlet. It doesn’t resort to sound byte reporting, and actually spends time explaining nuances. If that’s at the cost of silky, uber-professional air voices, it’s fine with me.
Dismissing someone like Sarah Vowell because of her voice means one would miss out on some very insightful commentary. She’s the kind of person we would all benefit from listening to.
I totally agree Mach. It think what you say jibes with my earlier post (17). I like that NPR emphasizes substance over form. That’s what credible sources of information should do. What’s the point of having a staff of Don Pardos if they’ve got nothing worthwhile to say?
In the cases in which I do object to an NPR host, I like to think it’s for substantive reasons. For example, I don’t like how Rehm treats callers whom she disagrees with. I think she does a bad job in drawing out subtle points that people can be trying to make. Kojo Nnamdi irritates me with his attempts at comedy. The guy is not funny. He should stick to the facts.
Heh. Some of the other NPR voices mentioned here don’t bother me, or at least not to the extent that I remember being irritated, and a few names don’t ring any bells with me at all. I have heard Diane Rehm, though, and was astonished she has a radio job. Listening to Ms. Rehm is like watching a TV news reader with an uncorrected hairlip. Call me shallow, but the aesthetics of the radio listening/TV watching experience matter. And while I appreciate the appeal to NPR quality as being preferable to airheaded or overly commercial voices, I think that’s a strawman argument. To put it another way, are we to believe that the most annoying radio personalities can’t be validly replaced, that there aren’t other similarly qualified, but less annoying, job seekers out there? I believe that Bob Edwards, for one, remains essentially underemployed…
Yep, Poggioli’s a bit plummy, isn’t she? I once had an Italian boyfriend (from Milano), and his English was superb, accented but without the exaggerated stylings of Ms. Poggioli. Too bad he’s not around anymore; I would’ve liked to have solicited his opinion on this.
Listening to Ira Glass can actually lower testosterone levels in heterosexual male listeners and can be beneficial to prostate cancer patients. Okay, that’s just my WAG.
And re. “gah.” Just “gah”? C’mon, man, you can do better than that. (We’re talking about Ira Glass, after all.) Make like Shatner in “Wrath of Khan”… Gaaaaaahhhh!! Gaaaaaahhhh!!! Gaaaaaaahhhhh!!!
You realize that she’s been on the air for something like 40 years? For those people who do think that she does a good job, I don’t think her more recent health problems should zero out her career.
I don’t think it is. To some extent, a person who has spent his or her life honing the skill of being a good journalist or interviewer or commentator is better off not developing a voice. It’s kind of like how pitchers don’t bother learning how to hit. Being a good journalist is of substantive value to society and it’s a skill that’s difficult to develop. Having a “good” voice is merely an accident of birth. There’s no guarantee that such a person will learn the more valuable skill, even if he or she is able to.
N.P.R. canned Bob Edwards essentially because he was a lightweight who coasted on his good voice and was for shit as an interviewer and a writer. I listen to “Bob Edwards Weekend” often … he gets many of the same guests that other public radio shows get, but his interview skills compare disfavorably, say, to Terry Gross’s interview skills.
And yet he does a fantastic show. To some extent, any “regular” person’s voice is going to be irritating to somebody.