The New Grammatical Category of Television Newscasters

Newscasters have created a new grammatical category, he says. A conjunction that disconnects one thing from another so that you must not be morbidly preoccupied with what you've just been seeing and you must now pay attention to a commercial. TV doesn't want this because if you linger too much on this story from Mexico City then you can't pay attention to the commercial. So they've invented this curious piece of language, you see now this and that's a signal. It says whatever concerns you had, whatever feelings might have been evoked by some of these dramatic images we've shown you, forget about it Because now we want you to pay attention to this commercial.