Talking Heads

When the weather gets brittle like this, I tend to do a lot more of my work from my home office and only visit customer sites for urgent needs. I have a television in my office, and since most daytime television is the bane of the thinking class, when the set isn't turned off, I've got it on CNN Headline News.

For the record, I'd like to say that Robin Meade is, beyond doubt, a very attractive individual. Let's face it... she's got a face that was built for television. Also, her ability to read from a teleprompter (which, after all, is one of the key requirements for a television news personality) is beyond reproach. In fact, just this morning she quipped that somebody in the booth was "testing her" when she had to read a headline story which was very likely fifty words in length with no less than 25 words beginning with the letter "p." She plowed through the paragraph with perfect punctuation and pugnacious perspicacity. (Sorry, I just couldn't resist.)

But for all that, there's something about the woman that just doesn't seem "newsy" if you'll pardon the term. It's hard to pin down exactly what it is, but I think it centers on the fact that she just laughs too damned much. I mean, it could be a light, fluff story or a reading of the latest war dead in Iraq, and she still seems to find something to crack a joke about and chuckle along with her co-workers. A little bit of enthusiasm is a requirement for a position like that, but there's such a thing as being too bubbly. Or, perhaps, just too damned perky - particularly at 8:00 in the morning on a work day.

Tone it down, Robin. You're driving me to distraction.