Well, the Peter Principle has shown itself to be extant in 2014
For those who weren't around, the phrase "rising to one's level of incompetence" may not be familiar. The idea was that in management, people are promoted until they can't do the job effectively and thus become entrenched...and incompetence prevails.
Normally I watch or at least have on the TeeVee, MSNBC because in Philly, the lowest level of basic cable includes only that cable news station (I exclude FOX from that classification). So I am home today and decided, just for fun, to put CNN on. It is fascinating to listen to one anchor after another, including the inimitable Ashleigh Banfield, just incompetently wade through this cesspool of "ideation" which they have been provided. On top of everything else that is wrong, mixed metaphors provide great fun: Ms. Banfield was exclaiming in her repetitive fashion that the search was now over two and one-half million nautical miles..."Sit on that for a minute." she said. SIT on THAT!!? Happy Days is on in the afternoon and being broadcast on CNN, there must be some residuals in there somewhere for the surviving cast. Next up: Up your nose with a rubber hose and back to you
But it is all hypothesis-in-hyperbole. Every fourth sentence as uttered by someone is jaw-droppingly non-journalistic or just plain ignorant. I can only imagine that CNN would cover the raging academic debate of whether Fermat's Theorem was still a puzzle or if it had finally been proven by a mathematician, since all of the correspondents had taken algebra in ninth grade. This may all be so complex that it will take competent people months to discern what happened if ever. But when facts fail, they just show the heartbroken families over and over with all the adjectives on loop. And the head-shaking and shrugging! Can you imagine Cronkite, Huntley, McGee, Murrow, or anyone from that era, sadly, tearfully shaking their heads after playing the SAME fifteen second exhortation from the same parent who has literally lost a loved one as though they have heard it for the first time. THAT gets me shaking MY head.
But my favorite is when the anchor says, "Honestly..." That is a refreshing change from the rest of their pap.
"Uh-oh, we are out of time and we'll have to leave it there."
= new reply since forum marked as read
