In a famous scene from the movie “Anchorman” (so famous I know about it even though I haven’t seen the movie), news producers lament that anchor Ron Burgundy will read whatever comes up on the teleprompter. An awkward moment on the local news tonight made me wonder if news items on the prompter come with some kind of label or color coding to cue anchors on what *tone *to use when reading them.
This local anchor’s beaming smile and sparkling eyes as she delivered this news would have fit perfectly with a human-interest story about, say, a zoo brightening people’s days during social isolation with cute penguin videos. But it was actually a report that Covid-19 damages the heart as well as the lungs! :smack: It was so uncomfortable, and so clear that she really must read the teleprompter robotically, without processing what she is saying whatsoever.
We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blond
Who comes on at five
She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye
It’s interesting when people die
Give us dirty laundry
But it seems like usually they have at least two emotional modes: the happy, twinkly-eyed one I described, and the somber “an area woman died tonight from injuries sustained in a car wreck early Saturday morning” type deal. It’s still robotic, with all bad news delivered basically the same way, but I can’t remember anyone getting the wires so starkly crossed before.