Radio

Driving from the East End recycle place this morning, I turned on the radio and punched up the Little Rock classical music station, got the usual finger-tip-touching, tippy-toe ballroom stuff, violins and harpsichords, not a hint of real people music of blaring brass and thundering timpani, no cavalry charges or Volga boat workers. I pressed “Seek” and when another station came up a woman was saying, “I wondered if she really felt that way or if she was depressed and sad.”

Holy … whatever. “… felt that way,” “depressed” … “sad.”

Without looking at the frequency readout, I knew it was the NPR station.

NPR works on “feel” or “felt” or “feelings.” Nobody ever says “believe” or “think” or “conjecture” or “deduce.” On NPR, everybody “feels.”

One day in 1980 at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram while editing a story for the local pages, I read once too many times (and I am not making this up; a reporter actually wrote this), “She said she feels that …” I turned to the city editor and said, “Would you please tell your reporters to stop feeling? They can feel this,” and I slapped my hands together, really hard. Besides, look at the waste of time and ink writing “She said she feels that …” rather than “She said …”

I heard a caller to a talk radio program say, “I just want to say that I feel that …” Good grief! Do such people not know the amount oxygen they steal from the rest of us? Just say it! Dive in!

The NPR talker reminded me of yesterday when driving from the East End Harvest grocery and I punched up the local talk radio station and heard a voice and then an over-voice: “You are listening to President Clinton at the funeral for Ed Koch. Geraldo is there, on the third row of pews. He’s got a good seat.”

I turned off the radio. Geraldo had good seats. Courtside, ringside … whatever.

Yeshua ben Joseph said something about not giving inordinate importance to the men who are on the front seats at the synagogue.

Or on radio, too.