Fox Tales: Pet peeves are my game
Mr. Webster says pundits are "learned people" or speak "with authority" on a variety of subjects.
They are heavy hitters in the world of journalism.I am not a pundit. I am not a learned man and I was not a learned kid. When teachers could be tough and get away with it, Mr. Grossman, my algebra teacher at Roosevelt High School, would often look at me with a withering stare and say "Fox, has your brain gone on vacation."
This would occur after one of my confused solutions to a problem.
I am not an authority. When Castro came to power I said confidently to a fellow editor at the Post-Dispatch, "Castro won't last six months." Now that is speaking with authority, even though greatly misguided.
So, I am a minor leaguer in the columnist world, hitting fungo shots on topics of no great importance, but topics that sometimes annoy people.
Let me give you some examples.
When someone on television intones, "For more on this story, log onto our Web site," The Woman I Live With reaches a towering rage and snaps, "What if you don't have a computer? How can you log onto something for more information? You can't do it."
Well, I have to agree with her.
Believe it or not, there are some people who don't have a computer, so if the television newscaster tells them he can only give them so much information then they have to turn to their computer, they are out of luck.
Oh, we have a computer, but I have yet to "log on" for more information. Just tell me what I have to know in the newscast and don't make me try our computer.
While on the subject of television, have you ever noticed how gracious an anchor can be to a reporter after he or she finishes a report?
The reporter says something like, "Temperatures will reach the high 90s today and older persons may be in danger," and the anchor will say, "Thanks, Joe or Mary" or whoever gave the report.
In my newspaper days, I worked for irascible editors who would never have dreamed of thanking a reporter for doing his or her job. That's what they were paid to do. Maybe television anchors are nicer people by nature, but as far as I am concerned they can skip the thanks and move on to the next story.
Then there is Donna, a clerk at our local Walgreens, who approached us the other morning and said, "Why don't you ever write about people and their dogs?"
I have, but Donna was in no mood for an easy excuse. She walks in Jefferson Barracks Park and was quick to add she is a dog lover and has a dog.
However, she expressed great annoyance with people who walk in the park not with one dog, but with several, and they are all on those leashes that can be spun out, sort of like a fishing reel, so the dogs can get more leeway.
"They take up the whole walking path," Donna complained and told about her recent personal experience in which some teenagers came by with a large dog on such a leash.
"It jumped in my face and scared me," she said.
What did the teenagers do?
"Oh, they just laughed," she said.
She wasn't finished. Too many dog owners, she said, do not clean up after their pets do their business on the walking path.
They even supply bags for such a problem along Grant's Trail, but I don't know how many take advantage of this.
I have another one. When I make a call, and a voice solemnly says, "if you know your party's name or extension you can punch in the numbers immediately, I want to say, "If I knew that, I wouldn't be calling you."
But maybe that is because I spent too many years working for those irascible newspaper editors.
I started this litany of complaints by referring to pundits, those sage who write for newspapers or opine on television.
Well, they can be annoying, too, and what is worse, you can't talk back to them very effectively.
Even minor league columnists like those of us who write only once a week for the Journal can be annoying to readers.
If you don't think so, just read Town Talk every week and you will get what I am saying.
Jim Fox, a retired newspaperman who lives in Affton, writes a weekly column for the Journals.
