A talk show host who can't speak? Today Rachael Ray finally did a segment about her hoarse voice, gave a guided tour of her larnyx where a benign cyst will soon be removed and dispelled tabloid rumors that she has throat cancer : "It's not true, and to prove I'm fine so that nobody worries about me, including my own friends and family, I let cameras go... well, where they just shouldn't go... They went down my throat."

In 1956 CBS turned the network over to Salvador Dali for 12 minutes, and he kept dissolving a head of cabbage into a rhino tusk. Rachael Ray's show can get equally surreal. Just the mention of certain foods or condiments causes the studio audience to erupt in wild applause. Last week, Ray made this strange statement: "I not only talk to my food, I talk to my dishes." I think Dali would have approved.

Without knowing anything about the rumors or the cyst, I had actually started watching her show because of a fascination with the surreality and her deteriorating voice. One day the rasping was so severe that Ray's guest interviewed herself as Ray sat helpless. I had concluded that she simply needed a vocal coach. as she speaks from the throat rather than the abdomen and keeps talking rather than breathing. Unable to communicate in a quiet conversational manner, she instead flails her arms about and attempts to bond with the studio audience by yelling at them while smiling, giggling and slamming her hand into the table again and again. Meanwhile, on another channel, her competition, Bonnie Hunt, does a similar show, speaking softly while delivering one funny line after another.  At one point on her show, Ray seemed to admit that her inability to speak properly is what caused the current problem.