A local talk radio guy (Mark Davis during his stint in DC, IIRC) was covering a controversy about a sex-education class demonstration of how to apply a condom, using a vibrator as a demonstration model.
One caller suggested that it might be more helpful to explain the vibrator’s intended use. The host responded. “I don’t think the schools are going to touch the ins and outs of masturbation – the kids are just going to be left to their own devices.”
Dead silence for several seconds, followed by a sputtering disclaimer that the puns were unintentional.
It never would have even occurred to me to laugh. When the power goes out, we have a UPS (retired from computer service when I bought a bigger one), a generator, a battery-powered radio that picks up the local TV stations, and a notebook computer with a cellphone-based Internet connection that can pick up live TV feeds.
Not only that, if I thought I was going to be without power for an extended period, I might go hang out at a friend’s house with power, or a bar in a nearby town with TV. That’s at least six different ways I could be watching (or hearing) that newscast while I’m “one of the people without power.”
Edited to add: Make that seven. I have a TV set in my camper trailer.
There was some other coverage I watched while looking for the Jennings’ quote that mixed metaphors about the towers “unzipping floor-by-floor like a peeling banana” which I remember for first making me wonder if I has misremembered the comment and second for being too ridiculous in its own right for me to have forgotten it had I seen it.
Everyone was repeating everyone else by the end of the day… the “peeling banana” image is apparently very popular with the 9/11-Truthers.
Some years ago, a French singer named Carlos died from cancer. It was announced on a radio in the following way :
“Popular singer, loved by both kids and grown-up…blah blah blah…, Carlos passed away this morning. We wish him a good last…err…a good…err…good…Good luck!”
Last night on MSNBC, someone referred to Mary Kate Olsen as an A-List celebrity. I’m there thinking “On what planet?” She’s maybe one step above Dancing with the Stars!
At one time, Haiti was a fairly popular retirement destination for white people from the United States and Canada. I’d imagine that the low cost of living and tropical climate are enough to keep some of these folks hanging around (and even a few new ones arriving), even given the country’s seemingly perpetual state of upheaval,
Even though the nation’s overwhelmingly black population has undoubtedly led a lot of these descendants of European immigrants to engage in interracial relationships, there might well be a few “racially pure” Caucasian lines hanging on even after several generations in Haiti.
But probably not very many African-Americans. Let’s face it: PC has caused a lot of people to automatically use the term African-American rather than black or Negro when referring to people of indigenous sub-Saharan African descent, even if they live in Africa. They mean no harm by it; they’ve just trained themselves into using it so much that they automatically equate African-American with “of sub-Saharan African.”
Print, rather than broadcast, but CNN.com had a headline this morning reading “Mega-preacher’s wife sued over loss of faith”. Sounded like an odd thing to sue someone over, so I read the article.
Um, no. She’s being sued over slugging a flight attendant.
The one that immediately pops into my head is the CNN Headine News report of James Brown’s funeral during which the overpaid bimbette newsreader AND her himbo partner each repeatedly referred to the horse-drawn hearse as a “carriage”.
I’ve mentioned in other threads of this nature the local idiot who always calls the State due north of Illinois West Consin.
