A job not highly rated these days

The job most likely to make each day seem without end may well be that of the highway construction “flagger” assigned to direct traffic through the job site.

Male or female, this stalwart poor man’s traffic cop stands at the designated roadside post through brutal heat and dust of July and frigid wind-whipped monsoon of late October. The only job requirement is the periodic flipping of a portable signpost from the red and white “Stop” side to the orange and black “Slow” command to motorists; the main job hazard is getting creamed by some distracted yuppie soccer mom driving a sports utility vehicle while yakking on a cell phone.

It seems like a job over which time would hang as heavily as that implied in the eternal damnation concept espoused by a Georgia preacher quoted by humorist Roy Blount Jr. in his book, “Camels Are Easy, Comedy’s Hard.” Blount wrote that when he was growing up near Stone Mountain, Ga., he heard sermons “in which the concept of eternal damnation was rendered as plain as the nose on your face” in this manner:

“Now, say that a robin redbreast was to fly over Stone Mountain every morning, carrying a worm. And as that little feathery bird went over the top, it brushed that huge mound of rock ever so slightly with that little slimy dead worm.

“Now, just try to imagine how long it would take that little robin redbreast to wear down that big hard mountain to a flatness that was as that of a parking lot. Well, now. Along about then, that would just be suppertime (not that you’d get any supper) of your very first day in hell…”

A long first day on the job, indeed. Which is pretty much how a day in the life of a highway construction flagger must seem, lengthwise, to the flagger. I have long supposed that the job would be about the last one a person would ever want to sign on for, ranking with, say, that of journeyman disemboweler in a fish processing factory.

But that supposition evaporated earlier this week as the media feeding frenzy surrounding the sniper shootings in the Washington, D.C., area got cranked up in good shape and the cable television news crowd went berserk in pursuit of high viewer ratings. Mankind’s Worst Job, it turns out, is not the highway construction flagger’s nor the fish-gut remover’s.

It’s that of the all-news cable network reporter or anchor who, with nothing new to report in a “breaking” story, feels obliged to say the same thing over and over and over again, nonstop, like a stuck whistle.

Talk about your basic slow-moving and frustrating workday. Not to mention your eternal damnation. For viewers, as well as for reporters. Surely, while they toil in the production of such inane overkill, it must cross the mind of more than one self-respecting reporter or anchor that the sentiment expressed in the old Johnny Paycheck ballad, “Take This Job and Shove It” is legitimate.

An endless parade of armchair experts, pop psychologists, forensic pathologists, psychiatrists, retired detectives, assorted has-beens and wannabe sleuths bent on giving advice to the cops while, in reality, aiding and abetting the killer made the rapidly developing sniper soap opera grow more surrealistic by the hour.

As the drama showed signs of playing out toward week’s end, anchors warned reporters against speculation and then commenced to speculate themselves. The top cop on the case was nice to the news media while he was manipulating it, and scornful of it as a major pain in the butt, otherwise. It was the stuff of which “Saturday Night Live” spoofs are made, and when politicians got into the act for a little on-camera face time one could fairly picture Church Lady remarking, “Now isn’t that special?”

Writing in The Washington Post, Harvey Goldstein, a psychologist and consultant to police, was disdainful of advice given by a former police detective to viewers wishing to avoid becoming the sniper’s latest victim: Don’t loiter, carry a shield (even folded arms), walk at a 45-degree angle. “The mental image that conjures up is ridiculous,” Goldstein suggested.

Agreed. Still, my pick of the litter in the ludicrous sniper-thwarting advice category remains that of the expert who counseled that potential victims might make themselves a tougher target by standing side-to the shooter. Just how one determines if one is positioned side-to in the sights of a concealed killer at any given moment, the expert did not say. (See “Saturday Night Live” spoof, above.)

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.