Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Good Morning, Matt. GoodMorningGoodMorning

For the most part, this is a fairly positive blog. RJ and I are both pretty positive people. There's one topic that we both have very strong feelings about. Strong enough to have a negative post. My 28th birthday (yeah, that's today) serves as a convenient excuse for writing a negative blog post: The Ann Curry Post. Also, this will be the first joint effort on this blog. Through the magic of blog technology, we're able to (I hope) both contribute to this post.

Update: We couldn't figure out how to have two people edit the same post, so instead RJ will add his thoughts on Ann later tonight. Also, it's no longer my birthday, but I don't want to edit the first paragraph, or wait another 364 days to finish this post.

I love The Today Show. I watch it frequently. For those of you who work with me: no, that's not why I show up late or why I work from home. Let's just say I TiVo The Today Show. Anyway, there's one aspect of The Today Show that ruins my Captain Crunch and Apple Juice: Ann Curry. To clarify, I don't have anything against Ann personally. I actually think she does a decent job on Dateline and some of the other NBC shows. But on The Today Show, she's terrible. My biggest complaint with Ann centers on her interviewing skills. She's an interrupter. We all know one, and maybe that's why Ann strikes a nerve with me (and the tens of others that I have discussed this with). In his post, I'm sure RJ will reference the interview where Ann was asking questions (sort of) of an expert on etiquette, and Ann would interrupt her...oh the irony. Ann really doesn't listen to what her guest has to say, but is just waiting (or not waiting) for her turn to ask a question.

So the interrupting thing is by biggest complaint with Ann, but because of this, I have started looking for other things that annoy me about Ann. These are probably things that I would look past if she didn't interrupt her guests. One of these is the way that she constantly tucks her hair behind her ears while reading the news. She could be reading a story about IEDs in Iraq, and mid-story she'll start messing with her hair. I want to believe that my news reader is at least thinking about the story that she's reading, instead of worrying about her hair.

Oh, and there's the way that she gets all nervous when she starts reading the news. Like she knows everyone is looking at her, so she starts talking all fast like the micro machine man. There are plenty of YouTube clips out there about her wishing us a good morning several times before getting to the headlines.

Finally, there's the Ann Curry question. If we want to analyze the actual question, it's more like a question-statement-underlated statement-different question-statement-pause. The guest typically doesn't know how to respond. Either that, or they just don't bother because they know that Ann is just going to interrupt them. Here's a sample (made-up) Ann question:

Ann: Senator Obama, You're wearing a blue tie, could you please explain why you're wearing a blue tie, I really like blue and think it's a good color, your views on healthcare are very interesting, What can we do to get out of the war in Iraq, I know that you don't like the war and I think we should get out of it as well (pause).

Senator Obama: Well Ann...

Ann: Sorry Senator, we're out of time, thank you so much for joining us.

We could get into much bigger issues here, like why I watch The Today Show, or why they brought back Kathy Lee, but that's not really the point of this post. We'd love to hear your thoughts on Ann, and stay tuned for RJ's post on this topic. Back to you, Matt and Meredith.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

She may annoy us, but she is hot and has a great voice.

Nate said...

The previous poster must have been:

A) Sarcastic
or
B) Thinking of Natalie Morales

Anonymous said...

I don't know which is worse: Ann's interrupting or the way she dramatically pitches herself forward, chin on fist, elbow on knee and continually says "em huh" with false sincerity.