Traveling from the radio station where I do mornings to the production office where I do afternoons, I was listening to the station when something both funny and, at the same time, poignantly sad crossed my radar.
A regular two minute feature, generating from CMT Radio, the audio sibling of the internationally broadcast Country Music Television, aired, one of those "celebrity update" things that you hear on most stations these days, usually nestled comfortably in amongst the consultant approved recipe of large doses of Chesney and Urban (and bears, oh my) and the repeated (and repeated...and...) suggestions that the quality of your life would be immeasurably improved if you would
a) buy a new car
b) lose weight
c) buy a new car
d) eat more fast food
e) buy a new car
Most days, and most times, those little "here's what happening in country music" kinds of things go in one of my ears and out the other, not so much because they aren't informative (which they can be) or because they're not interesting (which they manage to be now and then), but because I spend a lot of time in the day immersed in the very same culture about which they are offering up said information and interest and I simply, instinctively, just tune it out.
Think professional construction worker who doesn't really much notice the sound of jackhammers.
This particular broadcast, though, caught my ear.
And tickled my funny bone.
For an entirely wrong reason.
The voice offering up the latest dish/scoop/poop on the various and sundry comings and goings of the various and sundry Shelton/Lambert/McGraw/Chesney and Urban (and bears, oh my) adventures was, first of all, clearly the sound of a relatively fresh (read young), youthful (read very young) and new (read inexperienced) female, very clearly doing her best to very clearly read the very clearly written text of the very clearly constructed script in front of her.
Radio being a medium of sound and not sight, of course, there was no way for me to determine her exact age but, based on all the aforementioned very clearlys, I could probably hazard a guess.
My guess would be twelve.
Closet ageist sardonicism aside, I was willing and ready to concede that every wizened and grizzled voice of experience was once an unwizened and ungrizzled voice of inexperience very deserving a chance to learn, grow and wiz and griz when the aforementioned funny bone tickling occurred, sufficiently funny, in fact, as to provoke a literal and audible outburst of laughter on my part, something that, what with my being all wizened and grizzled and all, takes more than just a minor league ha ha to make happen.
In the course of a very non-life changing, but very clearly "info-tainment" worthy story about Taylor Swift's current dating life, said life currently, reportedly, filling up her dance card with the name Conor Kennedy (18 year old son of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.), said young and fledgling twelve year old radio girl offered up this tasty tidbit along with the main meat of the moment....
"...the Kennedy family all seems to be very supportive of Conor as well as being very fond of Taylor....sources say that even Conor's grandmother and matriarch of the family, Ethel Kennedy, has met and likes Taylor....do we hear wedding bells?..."
Okay.
Let's cut appropriate slack and not chastise the kid for dragging us through cliche number six in the gossip columnists handbook (the "wedding bells" thing). She, hopefully, was only the messenger and not the author of the message.
And let's continue slack whacking at the kid's overcompenstion for inexperience in her continued e-nun-ci-a-tion of ev-er-y syll-a-ble in her copy so as to be sure and sound pro-fess-ion-al.
But here's where the rubber left the road, the feces hit the fan and the funny bone got smacked up side the...well, funny bone.
The young broadcast "professional" didn't hestitate, or miss a beat, as she blew right through her own remarkable pronunciation of the name of the Kennedy matriarch.
"ee-THELL"
With the accent/emphasis on the THELL.
Cue outburst of laughter.
Hey, I do radio. I'm human. I have done/bobbled/had my share of stumble words and/or twisted tongues.
We all make mistakes.
That said, I am not currently the broadcaster employed as the voice of an internationally broadcast radio feature who doesn't know how to pronounce the name Ethel.
Whether its attached to a famous face or not.
And, come to think of it, Tina Twelve missed "Ethel" by a mile...
...and nailed "matriarch"?
To paraphrase my friend Jenna...
"she so funny".
Some might think it mean that I'm taunting Tina for her slip of the tongue.
But it wasn't a slip.
It would have been a slip if she said "Saylor Twift" or some other mangle as, through no fault of her own, a cat had been fighting her for possession of her tongue at the moment.
This was a flat out case of "she just assumed it was pronounced "ee-THELL"
With the accent/emphasis on the THELL.
And that, for me, is what makes this whole thing funny, a little sad...and a sign of the times.
It's bad enough that the culture really does seem to be for all appearances, on a, so far, successful
mission to dumb all of us down.
But now the dumbness seems to spreading in both directions.
Those of us a little more experienced in life can't help but be a little disheartened by that.
Just ask ee-THELL
With the accent/emphasis on the THELL.
You know...from the kenn-NEDDIE family.
She's the matriarch.
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