talking hairdo

n.

A television journalist who is superficial or who is concerned with appearance more than substance.

Example Citations:

But Iffy's heart goes out to Cubs fans. After Florida had dispatched the Cubs, 9-6, in Game 7, Barnacle Bill urged Iffy to switch over to the Howard Stern show, but instead Iffy pointed his rabbit ear west and tuned in WGN, the Chicago station, just in time to see its talking hairdos interviewing fans on their way out of Wrigley.

— Iffy the Dopester, "Cubs still spitting into the wind," Detroit Free Press, October 18, 2003

I don't know Dan Patrick, but I know this much: The fact that he's obsessed with his hair — indeed, pathologically sensitive about the whole of his physical appearance — doesn't make him an immodest or simple man.

"Talking hairdo," he sneers one afternoon at his desk, beneath a poster-sized blowup of a very young Muhammad Ali caught in midsentence at a lectern, in Black Muslim uniform, a Fruit of Islam cap on his head. "That's the worst thing you can say to somebody on TV: You're a talking hairdo, not a journalist. You get guys who just despise you. Don't they think I can write, that I study, that I know this stuff? Because I combed my hair today? Because I don't have mustard on my coat? Sorry — I like the way I look, and I'm on TV, and I gotta comb my hair. Don't hold that against me. Please. Be fair."

— Scott Raab, "Stone Phillips, eat your heart out," Esquire, February 1, 1999

Earliest Citation:

Another reason Hartigan isn't in a hurry to make his candidacy official is that his role as the state's attorney general will inevitably be judged somewhat differently, much as former Atty. Gen. Ty Fahner's grandstanding in the Tylenol probe and Thompson's intervention in the Dotson case were criticized by local TV's talking hairdos as — no kidding, folks — politically motivated.

— Steve Neal, "Hartigan's in no hurry to announce," Chicago Tribune, May 23, 1985

Notes:

This phrase was made famous by the social critic Neil Postman, who died on October 5. He used it in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, a scathing critique of modern culture's "descent into vast triviality" where "television newscasters ... spend more time with their hair dryers than with their scripts."

Related Words:

banalysis

barking head

frohawk

hathos

mullet strategy

newszak

punditariat

punditeer

shouting head

weapon of mass distraction

Categories:

Media and Journalism

Television

Insults

People