Thursday, February 28, 2008

Talking Stain

I've come up with a new term, thanks to this Supberbowl Commercial.

I've always been turned off by (and thus literally tend to turn off) supposed point/counterpoint shows on TV or radio where the guests and/or the hosts start talking and shouting over each other.

I like to hear both sides present their cases and then respond to each others' cases -- everybody should get to complete their argument. I realize there are time limits, so perhaps they should put a time limit on these segments that everybody knows ahead of time and is enforced by the host.

Of course this doesn't happen and often the host is one of the guilty parties.

We had the news on this morning and they had this guy on to talk about the drought of male teachers in our schools, why that might be, and what problems that might present to the rearing of boys.

Right or wrong, the guy started making his case, and the female host and her female analyst went all Talking Stain on the guy. Within a minute they were "talking staining" all over each other and it's just .... buh bye. It really has nothing to do with gender -- this happens on all such shows or show segments all the time. It's annoying and it serves no one.

I do think he kinda struck a nerve with these ladies, though -- in the opening part of his argument, he said that men probably don't want to be teachers because it doesn't pay well enough and it affects their social status significantly. If a guy walks up to a woman at a party and she asks what he does for a living and he says "I'm a doctor" -- she's thinking "house in Malibu!" If he says "I'm a teacher", she's thinking "Chevy Malibu."

The girls were having none of this. That's where it suddenly got ugly.

Methinks they protested too much.

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