Disgusting Beyond Belief

Everything concerning the O.J. Simpson book has been off-putting in the extreme, but at least Fox finally woke up to that fact, killed the book and the TV special. On the Tuesday lead-in to the 10 p.m. news on Cleveland's Channel 9, however, the female half of one of those aren't-we-cute news reader teams truly went beyond the pale in not allowing the story to die.
You can't rightfully call these people news reporters and the term "anchor" makes them sound more important than they are. The British refer to them as news readers, which in the words of the late Howard Cossell, tells it like it is. Between periods of cuteness they read the news, that's all they do. Just about every city in the country has a team, or several of them, and you could switch them from place to place and no one would notice the difference.
So before we could change channels last evening a female news reader named Stacey Bell proudly announced that even though the O.J. special would not air on Fox, she and her partner Bill Martin were going to tell Clevelanders where they could see it. While this was being said, Martin sat there with the insipid grin on his face that is part of every news reader's personality.
Now wasn't that exciting news? Forget Iraq, forget the bus crash that killed four high school students in Alabama, forget everything except getting to see the O.J. interview. It seems that is the sort of thing that arouses the prurient interest of the lowest, most pathetic group of TV viewers.
In the past we have occasionally watched Bell and Martin read the news and display their cuteness, but we won't be doing so again. We don't care to be part of any crowd that finds their garbage-can presentation appealing. I'll bet we aren't the only ones that feel that way.

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