Mad Libs

More about anchors ad-libbing. On Friday, whether it was the self-contradiction of a female anchor (I was listening via XM, didn't catch the ID) on MSNBC saying "This neighborhood in New Orleans just a couple of days ago was completely dry for the most part" or the redundancy of Wolf Blitzer saying "This was only just the beginning", there's ample evidence of the awkwardness many cable anchors are displaying when faced with the need to go off script.

Why should it matter if these folks have less than a way with words? Try this: In the early decades of TV, the technology was primitive enough that it was still possible to believe with a straight face that, as the one-time cliche had it, "the camera never lies". In that era, anchors came out of the newspaper business, were usually pretty good writers (Murrow, Brinkley) or ace ad libbers (Cronkite, Brinkley). Now, when we all use Photoshop and are all too aware of the tricks available, as well as the selective processes at work in choosing footage, words would seem to be more important in correcting manipulated visual impressions. And yet we have anchors chosen for abilities other than a gift for extemporaneous speech that takes advantage of a productive relationship between brain and mouth. Peter Jennings may have been a true throwback in this sense.

In answer to the critics of this site who keep yelping that I should stick to what I know, here's what I know: it's not as easy to improvise as it looks.