After reading an article about an incident on Los Angeles television, concerning the appearance of the weather presenter, I was struck by how much the infinitesimal minority in this country can dictate the policy and the way leaders react to criticism.

Here’s the background. Liberte Chan does the morning weather on Los Angeles TV station KTLA, and was at work doing what she normally does one Saturday morning. Chan is a very beautiful young woman, and on this particular Saturday, she was wearing a well-fitting dress that left her shoulders bare, typical summertime wardrobe, I would think.

During the broadcast, a male voice off screen offered her a grey sweater to put on to cover her bare shoulders, saying the station was getting a lot of e-mails, presumably from those concerned over the extra skin that Chan was showing, possibly distracting viewers from the all-important weather forecast in LA, which rarely ever changes anyway.
Chan dutifully donned the cover-up sweater and commented she looked like a librarian now, to which the off-screen voice responded, “That works!”

Problem solved, right? I mean, the “lot” of emails the station received were from viewers that had concerns about Chan’s appearance, and the sweater covered up the issue, so everybody was happy.

As mentioned before, KTLA broadcasts into Los Angeles, a city of 3.8 million people as of 2013, according to the US Census Bureau. I’m sure something short of that figure were likely watching that particular broadcast.

So how did we, and I’m talking about the majority of us in the US, come to let a few disgruntled people out of the millions dictate how the weather presenter should look on TV? I don’t know if the station received five emails, five hundred emails, or five thousand emails, but I would suspect it was probably in the range of the first figure.