I’m Not a Cat Lady

Sonia Sotomayor is a Lahd-TIIIIIIIIna!

Go ahead a call me petty, but this has been catching my ear a lot lately. As I've been listening to news updates on NPR over the last couple of days, Sonia Sotomayor's nomination as associate justice of the Supreme Court has been continually mentioned. She is, as we all know by now, the first Latina to ever win the post. And listening to the announcements, I am once again struck by the way newsreaders pronounce the word Latina. Doesn't matter if they're of actual Latin-American heritage themselves or direct descendants of the Mayflower pilgrims—they all seem to go out of their way to infuse the word with every ounce of Latin flair they can muster, pronouncing it: Lahd-dtiiiiiiinah!

It's one thing to honor a person's preferred pronunciation of their family name—in this case, Soto-mai-yohr—but is it necessary to put on such a performance when merely stating an ethnonym? Take Lakshmi Singh. Have you ever heard her introducing her weekly show? "From National Public Radio, it's Lahd-dtiiiiiiino USA!" Up to "it's," she sounds like any standard American-accented NPR-style newsreader. And then, just like that, she's Charo. She should go the whole hog and say "Lahd-dtiiiiiiino Oo-ess-ah!"

Okay, so her mother is Puerto Rican. (And with a name like Lakshmi Singh, who knew?) But I've heard newsreaders and announcers who don't have a drop of Hispanic blood in their veins make a meal out of Latino and Latina. Or the names of Latinos and Latinas. Like Gasia Mickaelian, on KTVU Channel 2. In the promo for her News at 5, the voiceover guy practically bursts an artery when he says her name: "Gaaaaaa-theeya Meee-kaiii-YAAAAYAAY-yian!" Why is that?

I don't hear people do this for names of people in other ethnic groups. Nobody suddenly lapses into Chinese tonal inflections when reporting about Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Perhaps it's in deference to the fact that the Hispanic population is the fastest-growing sector in the country right now. Who knows: One of these days Spanish will be the majority language, so it's probably a good idea to start brushing up. Si?

Shocker: Kids Love Watching Good Old-Fashioned TV

You know how you're always hearing from media analyzers and pundits that TV is dead because nobody sits and watches it like people did in the olden days anymore, but streams on their computers or iPhones—especially The Kids? Guess what? Not true.

Hannah Montana, Jonas, iCarly, Drake & Josh and Zoey 101 are among the top shows on cable, they're often the most-watched shows in all of broadcast in their time slot, and they're No. 1 among a demo that includes ages 6 to 11 and 9 to 14. The Disney channel is the No. 1 choice for tweens. But here's what's really interesting. The writers on these shows are veterans of old-school sitcoms like Roseanne, The Jeffersons and The Facts of Life. And these shows all stick to the tried-and-true multi-camera/laughtrack formula made popular by golden-age-era TV shows like I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners.

I heard this report on NPR's All Things Considered tonight, and it totally stopped me in my tracks. The writers on these shows model them on those they consider the classics: Taxi, Bewitched, The Brady Bunch, Cheers, Dif'frent Strokes, et al. In an episode called "I Love Sushi," Drake and Josh do an updated version of the old Lucy-and-Ethel-at-the-chocolate-factory gag. But with sushi. And it killed. Still funny after 50 years.

At a time when everyone is panicking about how to keep up with the new-fangled whims of Kids Today—their wee brains wired so very differently from their parents, what with all that growing up with computers and cellphones and iPods and whatnot—here they are, perfectly happy with cheesy old-fashioned TV shows just like the ones their great-grandparents watched. Written by people who are considered too old to hire for primetime broadcast and cable shows.

Deliciously ironic, don'tcha think?

Old-School Sitcoms Find Fans Among a Younger Set

Only in America: Layoff Survivors

I was listening to NPR today—All Things Considered or Talk of the Nation or one of those programs—and heard a new expression: "layoff survivor."

It was bandied about several times during a discussion about a Time article about "survivor's guilt," which examines all the boo-hooing going on in offices across the land by the poor workers who remain employed while their fellow cubicle-dwellers are shown the door. I'm sorry, but the use of "survivor" in this context is worse than inappropriate: it's criminal. A survivor of war or a concentration camp, okay. Of a serious fire, flood or famine, yes. A potentially fatal accident by air, land or sea, definitely. Any kind of cancer whatsoever, you got it. Sexual abuse? This is where it gets fuzzy for me. The last time the trials of those (allegedly) pedophilic priests from Massachusetts was being discussed, I heard the victims describe themselves as survivors. That gave me pause. I know that nobody wants to be seen as a victim, but I'm not sure if they can really describe their admittedly heinous experiences as being on a par with getting out of Hurricane Katrina alive.

And now, this. It's horrible losing your job. It's happened to me, more than once. Two different magazines I was working for folded abruptly due to the recession in the early 90s. I was flat-out fired by one boss because, well, he was a prick with a reputation for sacking people who didn't kiss up to him, so I'm proud about that one. And I was laid off again along with several other people three years ago, just as I was about to embark on family medical leave to spend time with my father, who lived in another country and was dying. (That one I still have nightmares about.) And I lost a cushy little freelance online gig last October, along with hundreds, nay thousands, of other media folk who have been losing jobs faster than the Dow can plummet.

Sure, I suffered, and I survived. But please. Unless getting laid off includes taking a bullet to the head or a bit of mandatory water torture, a person who has loses their job does not qualify as being a survivor. I think "sad sack" is the appropriate term, let's be honest.

photo courtesy of mediabistro.