The Opinionator

Pick a Little Talk a Little

 "The View" doesn't do it for me

Sometimes I like to push the mute button on my television remote and watch the programming by reading the subtitles.  I can imagine what it must be like to be deaf and I can give myself a kind of sound break while working on my lip reading skills.  There must be someone at the network level wearing a headset and typing the dialogue into a character generator as fast as their fingers will move.  Sometimes these caption people, or whatever they are called, exhibit terrible spelling skills, but they can capture the gist of the conversation they are transcribing.

When Rosie O'Donnell started making everyone mad at her a few weeks ago I tuned into "The View" for several days to see what was going on. It's hard to follow the conversation because they all talk at once.  It can be interesting, though, because they have such extreme views.  They are always dumping on the Catholic Church, laughing about predator priests or making jokes about teaching nuns and childhood religious idiosyncrasies.  Catholics might enjoy doing this among themselves, but they hate seeing on national TV before an audience of 10 million. 

When I can make out what they are saying, I have liked the shocking and fearless pronouncements of Rosie, the conservative ways of Elizabeth, and the fence straddling skills of producer Barbara Walters. Because they all talk at the same time, you can get weary watching them.  The other day I decided to mute the TV sound and let the sub-titles tell me what was going on.

First of all, you realize that the transcriber is not getting it all.  Two or three mouths are moving but the screen is only showing one statements.  If you wait, the next line will come across the screen, but as you see the mouths working, you know you are behind and will probably never catch up. While some can type as fast as they speak, it is a rare transcriber who can talk as fast as four people speak.

They say this is "woman's TV" and I have never been able to figure out what that means.  Nor have I ever been able to understand the term "chic flick."  "Woman's TV" apparently means daytime television which it is assumed women can more easily watch than men.  That doesn't work for me because I know as many women as men who work outside the home.  As far as "chic flick" is concerned, I think it means a movie which: (1) can make you cry; and (2) has little or no violence.  I love chic flicks.  Anything is better than some of the latest films.  Take the newly released "Transformers:"  "I bought this used car, drove it home and it started to turn into a robot."

Anyway, "The View" doesn't do it for me, and it does it less since Rosie departed.  She didn't take any crap from Donald Trump or the White House.  For awhile there she was the Cruella de-Ville of cable news commentators, but she seems to have lost those sweepstakes to people like Paris Hilton and John Edwards and his haircuts.  Maybe her role as a cable news piñata will be reprised if the networks offer her a job hosting something else.

The show feeds the stereotype of yakking gossips.  I am reminded of the Meridith Wilson song from the "Music Man":

Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little

Cheep cheep cheep, talk a lot, pick a little more

(Three times)

Pick a little, talk a little, pick a little, talk a little

Cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep