Jim Taricani Snizzles All Over Local Nail Salon Owner

I don’t normally watch the news, because it brings out my unfortunate habit of yelling at the TV every time Gary Ley uses the word snizzle or anybody mentions the president or anybody mentions the governor or TJ DelSanto does anything because OH MY GOD that man annoys the crap out of me, but I happened to watch the premiere of the new Brooke Shields nonsense tonight and then was too lazy to change the channel, so I caught Jim Taricani’s report on nail salons and it was too much for me to watch without feeling compelled to blog angrily at two thirty in the morning.

Taricani profiled a guy in Johnston who owns three Hollywood Nails salons across the state, and thanks to the intrepid reporter’s research (ie. haranguing the guy in his driveway) we learned that the dude is driving with an expired registration and doesn’t want everyone to know what he’s paying his employees. He might be a creep–a number of his female employees live in the Johnston house that his wife owns, and they may or may not be here illegally–but there’s no way to tell because Taricani prefers to accusingly bark at the camera about how the guy drove from one salon to another “at a high speed!”

He also sent in a producer to go undercover and film the salon with a grainy hidden camera. The producer asked to see the salon’s license to operate in Rhode Island, and… the camera cut away before we learned whether they even had one or not. And even if they didn’t, a state official reluctantly admitted in a two-second clip that in fact the state doesn’t actually employ anybody to inspect the salons. So, really, does it matter to the average customer if the salon has a license or not?

While the real story seems to be that the state doesn’t have anybody inspecting tools that get stuck under dozens of fingernails every week, the i-Team cares more about criticizing Asian-run salons because, if the story is to be believed, salons run by Asians are just naturally inferior. By way of comparison they interview a certain Ms. Tarbox, a white lady from West Greenwich, the Beverly Hills of western Kent County. I remembered her name because an ex-roommate of mine used to think that the funniest thing about Rhode Island was the name Tarbox being on the radio all the time. Ms. Tarbox, when interviewed, said that customers are driving as far away as Coventry (!) and Warwick (!!) for manicures at Asian salons because those salons are cheaper. Cheaper, she says, because they’re not as good. “They always wear masks,” she says, or something very close to that; I’m going from memory here and it’s late. “You have to wonder why they need them.”

I’m not saying there’s not a story here. The report brought up a national advocacy group for Asian women’s rights who put out a report about how salon workers work long hours for low pay around materials that may cause long-term health problems. But rather than diving deeper into that, Taricani mostly occupied himself with calling out one salon owner on the grounds that he was an immigrant.

This came, incidentally, right after a total non-story about how kids in Providence middle schools got new rulers on Tuesday because the old ones might have been tainted with lead (“Made in China!” spat Gene Valicenti) and right before Gary Ley used the word snizzle like eighty-six times in his extended forecast. Also, every single damn story ended with a reporter telling you to go to turnto10.com. Um, no thanks, guys, I think I’ll just stick to more reliable news sources and long for the glory days when reporters didn’t feel the need to yell everything and dressed amazingly, too.

And I’ll just chalk up to coincidence the fact one of the sponsors of tonight’s broadcast was a certain car dealership whose name rhymes with Yarbox.

(In channel 10’s defense, sort of, I did actually just turn to their website, while looking for the name of the Hollywood Nails guy. And, you know, the story’s not actually up, so I couldn’t find it. But I did learn that the station employs an ombudsman, whose job it is to ensure fairness and investigate complaints of inaccuracy. So, I guess I’ll be e-mailing him now.)