Aged Ham

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It’s a rare night when I catch the Ch. 20 news but when I do I’m usually rewarded with at least a chuckle at some point. Last night I actually laughed out loud when I heard Elizabeth Wooley reading a story on the Amanda Hamm trial. I’ll admit “The 30 year-old Hamm…” doesn’t look nearly as funny in print as it sounds when read out loud, but things like that are particularly amusing to me after spending many years writing broadcast news copy consciously trying to avoid obtuse double meanings. I mean who needs an image of a rotting ham 30 years passed its freshness date distracting from the story. At least the 30 year-old Hamm isn’t from Oblong, Illinois or we’d be hearing about “the Oblong woman” too. Come to think of it though, hams are kind of oblong.