Sometimes You've Got to Say, "F*ck It"

TV news anchors and reporters seem to be held to a different standard than the rest of us poor slobs. For years, you never saw anyone wearing glasses, even if they were over 60. Men always had a full head of hair. And no one was even chubby. Then along came Harry Smith, who occasionally took over the anchor desk on the CBS Evening News, with his receding hairline and glasses.

Not a whole lot has changed. The news world is full of middle-aged people reporting without glasses (I often wonder how close those teleprompters are to the anchor desk). Most of them are fairly trim and they usually look very crisp and well-groomed, except for perhaps the perpetually rumpled Chris Matthews of MSNBC.

But sometimes they carry appearances too far. The reporter on the local news this evening is warning people that staying outside for any longer than necessary can cause permanent nerve damage, because wind chills are already dangerously low and are expected to blow to a numbing 30 below zero by morning. Good advice, sure. But the reporter, a 50-ish white male, reported the story for a full five minutes from downtown Chicago, outdoors in a base temperature of 12 above, wind chill of -7, with no hat and his coat unzipped low enough to expose his shirt and tie. Now I ask, does that make any damn sense?

Some years ago, in Jacksonville, Florida, a young black female TV reporter, just a few years out of college, drowned when a boat she was reporting from suddenly capsized. She was unable to swim – her boyfriend told the press that she never wanted to mess up her hair – and had removed her life jacket to film the segment for appearance’s sake. A terrible waste.

This type of situation reminds me of William Henry Harrison. He was elected President in 1840, at 68 the oldest man to be elected (a record he would hold until Ronald Reagan was elected 140 years later). He gave an inauguration speech on a cold, rainy day in Washington without a hat or topcoat because he wanted to give an impression of robust good health rather than old age. He caught a cold, it deepened into pneumonia, and 30 days later he was dead, the shortest administration in history and thus beginning the "Zero Factor" among U.S. Presidents that resulted in death for everyone elected with a year ending in zero (that also ended with Ronald Reagan).

I wish more of these reporters would be more like Al Roker of the Today show. Old Al doesn’t hesitate to bundle up when he’s on the air outdoors. Sometimes you can barely see his face!

It’s one thing to look cute. It’s another thing to risk your health or your life.

By the way, I’m not going to work tomorrow. Too damn cold.