Real news–and false eyelashes

Excuse us for niggling, but there’s a bigger point to be made with our seemingly trivial nota bene today: For days now, we’ve been watching the evening news on TV, and note that a lady newscaster has recently taken to wearing an all too obvious set of false eyelashes while she’s reporting the news.

Obviously, she isn’t the first broadcaster to sport false lashes on TV—the others have just been less pronounced. But we take cautionary note of her, because she apparently thinks that she’s getting away with her cosmetic ploy to achieve extraspecial “beauty.”

Her false eyelashes don’t even attempt to look natural—they have regular spaces between the tufts, curl up in a sophisticated but clearly artificial way, and call attention to themselves.

So, what’s the big deal? Why don’t we just stop watching her newscast to avoid the distraction, and leave her to her artificial ruse and fantasy?

Because the obviously false eyelashes are a small symptom of a longer mismatch that afflicts some news people on the tube, and we would all be better off if we acknowledge it, so it can be nipped in the bud.

Basically, the more general disconnect lies in the fact that some newscasters are on TV not just to inform the public, but also to show off what they feel are their exceptionally good looks and “star quality.”

Hence, they don’t just appear on TV, they do their best to look really glamorous or dashing, like they’re going to a cocktail party right after the evening newscast. The false eyelashes most of the other news ladies sport aren’t as obviously fake, but they’re there.

So, our note isn’t just for one newscaster who’s gotten carried away, but some others who think more of themselves than of the news they deliver:

Please adjust your priorities accordingly. We assure you that many of you are not as lovely or handsome as you think—and, more importantly, viewers don’t really care if you are or not. What’s important to us is the credibility and objectivity of the news you report.

For proof of this, some newscasts feature anchors who are not lookers by any means or contrivance, and yet their programs are top-raters.

They don’t really give a false eyelash about how they look—they just want to be good broadcast journalists!

So, leave the looks and glamor department to the real raving beauties and hunks in the acting and singing fields. “Stardom” is for them, not for real broadcast journalists, who know that the news is what’s really important, not how “great” (or not) they look.