Zombie President

7 and 8

7.

"You have to be the biggest moron east of the Mississippi."

She said the words in a mellifluous tone, a newscaster's voice. But they were still bitchy in spirit.

"I would rather give blowjobs to the entire offensive line of the Packers at halftime before a capacity crowd at Lambeau Field than edit out that shot," she said.

Twisney Ramsnootch was not subtle. What she was, apparently, was "exotic."

That word had been flung at Twisney so many times in her life that it no longer even registered with her. Station managers used the word when introducing her to her colleagues. Viewers used it when emailing the news department about her appearance. And her last ex-boyfriend had used once when they were having sex, which was just plain creepy.

Twisney had explained myriad times over the years that her striking features were the result of ethnic interbreeding over multiple generations that left her more racially mixed than seemed mathematically possible. Who else could claim to be one-sixteenth Dutch and one-eighteenth Trinidadian?

Still, that uniqueness had gotten her exactly nowhere in her career. More accurately, it was the middle of nowhere, rural Wisconsin, where journalists started or ended their careers. Twisney was closing in on thirty, the age at which she figured she would have at least one Peabody Award and be anchoring the news in Chicago — maybe even LA. Yet, her last report for the station, another clip for her increasingly depressing reel, was a kicker on the oldest dog in town.

"The oldest fucking dog in town," she snapped. "That was my last fast-breaking, major-scoop exposé. The oldest. Fucking. Dog. In town."

The object of her scorn, Grant the hapless cameraman, bristled. They had been looking over video footage in the editing bay for hours now, and he didn't have the energy to argue.

"I only shoot them, Twisney. I don't pick 'em," Grant said.

"Then shoot them and don't give me stupid-ass ideas on editing," Twisney said. "I finally have a story with sex and violence, and you want to BBC the damn thing up."

"But I'm not sure we should be going in this direction," Grant said.

"Hey, I got this stupid twit to tearfully confess, on camera, that she physically assaulted her mom. And she did it on the night of the prom — in her puffy dress and everything — because she found out her mom was regularly banging her prom date."

"The whole story is seedy."

"Yes, and it will be perfect for my dumb-girl persona."

This was Twisney's latest invention. During her first year at the station, Twisney had presented herself as a knowledgeable, intelligent journalist with a keen grasp of the details, an exquisite vocabulary, and formidable powers of observation.

And viewers didn't give a fuck. They just kept emailing that she looked weird.

So in her second year at WSCK, Twisney changed tactics. She giggled during her signoffs. She intentionally said malaproped clichés on-air like, "barking up a dead tree," and "you can cut the excitement with a fork." She left the top three buttons on her shirt open during field reports. She threw around the word "literally" as much as possible during interviews. And when she ended her story on a lunar eclipse by wondering aloud, "Is the moon, like, a star or something?" her transformation was complete.

The last few months of viewer email had been overwhelmingly positive, with people stating that they appreciated how she was down to earth and easy to relate to (plus one that exclaimed she was "really fuckable!"). Twisney was at long last connecting with viewers. It was her ticket to the big city.