#1145 Windy Breezy

“Anyway the winds blows,” “The answer is blowing in the wind,” “Everyone calls her windy,” the wind courses through our daily lives. From the airwaves to the weather service, it’s wind, wind, wind.
Wind is also one of those unfortunate words that depends on context when we read it. Like read and read. Polish and polish. You can throw your watch in the wind when it stops or you can wind it when it stops. One way you’re obviously too wound up, the other way the watch is wound, but either way it’s still spelled w-i-n-d-.
There’s also the blowhard winds of opinion we hear from the various biased news services.
To look at news reports, you’d think all of America is either a Fox News or MSNBC mindslave. But no, these channels are really will o’ the wisps in the larger scheme of things.
As one commentator put it, “switch on Fox News and you’d think huge numbers of Americans think Obama is a Stalinist. Switch on MSNBC you’d think most people want Dick Cheney waterboarded at Guantanamo.” But guess what? Less than 1% of Americans tune in Fox on a typical night, 2.6 million, MSNBC a mere 831,000. The three regular broadcast stations ABC, NBC, and CBS, have a much more respectable 20 million.
It’s just that the extreme voices attract the most attention. Like squeezing the open neck of a balloon, they make the rest of the air seem louder than it is.
They don’t call them windbags for nothing.
But it’s nice to know that 98% of Americans don’t tune in to either Fox or MSNBC.
And speaking of blowhards and blowing hard, what does it take for the weather service to say “windy”? The other day there were sustained winds of 25 MPH and gusts of 45. The weather service said it was “breezy.”
Breezy? To me breezy is light. A gentle puff wafting through the trees, tickling the wind chimes into tinkling. Breezy is not gusty, and it sure as heck isn’t windy.
So at what point does the official weather service designation for “windy” kick in, 45, 50, Keith Oberman, Rush Limbaugh, gale force?
The answer my friend, is...
America, ya gotta love it.