Sibilant Rivalry

Speak now or forever hold your peath. The Media seems to be overrun with people who have noticeable and distracting speech impediments. Just read their lisps.

Ex-football player Michael Strahan has replaced Regis Philbin, and is now Kelly Ripa's co-host on ABC's newly-monikered "LIVE! with Kelly and Michael" (not exactly an inspired title, by the way).

In the case of Strahan, there is a glaring gap in his two front teeth, wide enough to drive Mitt Romney's ego through. Surely Strahan can afford a cosmetic improvement. Not only is the gap a visual distraction, but it creates an aural annoyance as well, as the anomaly causes him to lisp every "S," thereby sounding unintelligently Tysonesque.
 
Ellen Pompeo is another sibilant star, also on an ABC show ("Grey's Anatomy"). Do the casting directors at ABC have an affinity for lispers? Her voice is already childlike in delivery and pitch; the verbal defect makes her sound even more like a little girl. Tell me, would you hire a doctor who speaks like Cindy Brady?
 
Other A-lispers include Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Drew Barrymore, Michele Obama and Keira Knightley, some of whom have terrible overbites or underbites. While it's a fact that we all have our flaws, myself included, I don't want to hear a celeb sound like a cartoon character, because that drives me



Sylvester the Cat