Can You Dig It?: Dispatch from the Desktop

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Dispatch from the Desktop

A defunct power cord/charger has limited our laptop use to "emergency uses" only and exiled me upstairs to the wheezing 7-year-old guestroom desktop. I will not be able to right-click, and it could freeze on me at any moment, so I must get this message to you quickly.

Why do so many radio and television broadcasters have lisps?

You would think that the constant ridicule from their peers -- growing up, and later, in the news industry -- would have led them to careers that would require them to speak less, or at least not to so many people.

Nope. These pee-po have embwaced their impediments and want the wohd to hear the angewick wolds that spwing fowth from their mowves.

I went to the speech therapist for a couple sessions in elementary school to work on my Rs and Ls. Outside of my immediate family, nobody made fun of me for it, but I think it's one of the reasons I went into writing. I could say a lot, without actually having to say it.

I still have trouble with some words. "Particularly" is still particularly hard for me to say. And since my teeth have retreated to their pre-braces clusters, you never know what's going to come out of my mouth. If it gets any worse, I may have a career in radio ahead of me.

NPR hires a lot of reporters with lisps or other speech impediments. I admire these people for making it to the pinnacle of radio reporting despite the goofy way they talk. That requires some serious fortitude.

It's certainly distinctive. I'll sit in the car and hang on every word government reporter Peter Overby says. The other week, in a story on the natural gas industry's lobbying shortcomings, he had a particularly (sounds so much better written down) tough phrase to handle, but he rocked it like a champ. I've had it stuck in my head ever since:

"There's a coal caucus in congress."

Say that a bunch of times fast.