Check it, Peons: Your CNN Humiliation Compartmentalized

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

THE PUSSY WARRIORS


The most testosterone-driven department within CNN was, unsurprisingly, the sports department. Before the advent of the CNNSI sports network (which folded only few years after it was launched) the sports shows were just done on a hideous set lurking in the same studio as the regular news set. This monstrosity had to be pulled out and set up nightly. By the time I worked there, it was so banged up that it looked like the cast members of STOMP had performed on it for 10 years.
When CNNSI launched, the sports guys were exiled to whole new zone, sealed off from the news department. It was even on a separate floor. This led to a frat-house environment, only the frat boys wore neatly pressed white shirts instead of togas. Whenever female VJ's had to go there to floor direct, they'd come back and report on who had "penis eyes" and who had hit on them. Then everyone discussed the lines that were used. Well that, and how one idiot used to practice his sports sound effects (Boooooiiinngg!!! Ziiiinngg! Bllllluuurrrrppp!!!) ad nauseum before going on air.
But CNNSI guys soon realized the disadvantage of being separated from the rest of the newsroom: lack of women. Like I said, only a few stray women had to wander into their sports lair once in a while, and even fewer women actually worked there. This was was not the desired quantity of women.
So some of them would saunter back upstairs to the newsroom after their shows, eyes darting from female to female, on a poontang pilgrimage. However, away from their home turf they had the disadvantage that some newer CNN recruits did not necessarily know who the bigwigs were. And certain anchors especially wanted it known that they were anchors. To telegraph their status, they'd strut through newsroom, ties unloosened, swinging their earpieces like lassos. This seemed to exclaim:
"See! I have an earpiece! And I use it! On the set! In front of the camera!"
I called these prowling packs of mighty, earpiece swinging, booty-stalking men: THE PUSSY WARRIORS.

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