Song Sung Bleu, Blanc et Rouge

By Mademoiselle Kubelik

Sometimes it would be really good if news anchors would just, ahem, shut up.

We cats aren't huge fans of Vin Scully, but we remember very well how, after the Mets rose from the dead to win Game 6 in the 1986 World Series, he and his colleagues in the booth just STFU for — like, 10 minutes. After which Scully returned to the mic and said, "If a picture is worth a thousand words, you have just seen a million words."

Wish that MSNBC anchor Richard Lui had followed that advice yesterday and just let the pictures do the talking.

Emmanuel Macron did the French-Presidential-election equivalent of running the bases last night — talking a very long walk from wherever his SUV was parked at the Louvre to the microphone in front of the Pei pyramid. It was perfectly choreographed and brilliantly scored — not with "La Marseillaise" or something Frenchy, but with the unofficial anthem of the European Union, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."

The Ninth Symphony being a favorite, our keen cat ears picked it up right away, and we longed to hear a few comments about it. How did it come to be the EU's theme song? Was playing it also a gesture of solidarity toward Angela Merkel, as Beethoven is obviously Germany's greatest composer? Or was it just really neat and spine-chilling?

It would have been great to hear a short conversation about all that, after which everybody could have just sat back in silence and soaked up the scene. But, no — we were denied both the chat and the chills. Despite the celestial music and the cheering crowd, Lui would not stop yapping about minutiae he'd already covered over and over for hours, utterly ruining the moment.

Dear Richard, we like you and your pals at MSNBC. But taisez-vous, eh? We cats HISS.