By Tom
“Sally Jessy” Waters
December
16th, 2002
If I had a choice between
watching daytime talk shows or see-sawing on jagged rocks, I believe
I’d choose the latter. These programs, which some schedule their social
calendar around, have become a parody of a caricature of themselves.
The ratings dictate that the host be female (or, in Jerry Springer’s
case, lacking a penis) marginally pudgy, spineless in regards to values,
and willing to tar and feather a guest should the mob-mentality of the
studio audience hint as much. Oh, I almost forgot. They also have to
be a flaming liberal to the point of spontaneously combusting without
warning.
You see, my impression was
that the manifesto of a talk-show would involve talking, conversation,
an interactive exchange between two or more people. Strike four. Guests
and audience members are allowed to talk long enough to make a jackass
out of themselves and then the host cuts them off to insert her two
cents. And believe you me, it doesn’t take any of the guests (on stage
or off) long to make fools out of not only themselves, but their extended
family and the next couple of generations.
This is only partly their
fault though, as executives recruit the toothless, degenerate, ignoramus
trash of the earth (white, black, calico, it doesn’t matter) because
they’re entertaining to the general public in the same sense that a
dog licking himself is amusing. The dog doesn’t quite know that it’s
his lack of social graces, and not his amusing candor, that’s so comical
to those around him. And the more incestuous and primordial the guest,
the bigger the response. Of the shows that I could stomach, here are
the basic premises:
The Miracle Makeover
Trailer-park families drag on a father or mother they’re embarrassed
of for their abhorrent biker/pocket-protector/parachute-pants taste
in clothes. After a tear-felt testimony of the child’s long term trauma
from being associated with this person, the parent is coerced into going
backstage. After a suspenseful (guffaw at will) commercial break, the
family member, having just been battered in pancake makeup, shaved for
the first time this century, de-liced, and given a power-suit, waltzes
triumphantly onto the stage looking like a cast member from “FRIENDS”
and basking in the audience’s approval. The rest of the show is spent
cooing over the new look and asking how said guest feels about this
catastrophic superficial change. Side-note: Everyone’s hair looks like
crap for about a week after a hair-cut, I’m wondering how bad these
people look the day after if they were so ugly in the first place.
Lesbian-Circus Dwarf-Gila
Monster Love Triangle And Other Sexual Freaks Of Nature
These almost always consist of a rail thin husband, and a wife who’s
about four hundred pounds who by some paranormal act not only weeble-wobbled
out of the house but cheated on her husband with three other people
as well. The husband often pleas for faithfulness and restoration of
marriage vows. This is always a good segue for the other man to say:
“Well, if you knew how to satisfy her in the first place she wouldn’t
have gone elsewhere,” to which the fifth-grade mentality audience catcalls
and praises. Usually, these issues don’t get resolved, but it’s often
good fodder for almost-fistfights and psychotic audience soapboxes,
which we’ll get to later. Side-note: It disgusts me to think that these
people have reproductive organs. The thought that numerous people touch
them with anything other than a cattle-prod invites violent spasms.
My Child Is A Gang Member/Pimp/Satanic
Priest
Father or mother exposes their child for the deviant mess that they
are. Child throws tantrum, cries, storms off stage in a gesture of independence
and maturity (eh, yeah). Crowd skewers parents for not loving the kid
enough/spanking the kid until his cheeks were raw/attending to their
every need for the first fifteen years of the brat’s life. Brat is coaxed
back on stage to audience fanfare, host sweats on kid until moving reunion
takes place. Side Note: I’m never having kids.
Special Interest Hate
Mongering Group(s)
One of the many scourges of society is introduced, booed, and teased
into a spitting, hopping frenzy. For the first fifteen minutes of the
show the group explains why they are positive that people who use refillable
laundry detergents should be strung up from telephone poles. These episodes
are good opportunities for the host to shout out such lines as: “You
make me sick. If I were you I’d shoot myself.” Fifteen minutes into
the show, one of the group members tries to bludgeon host to death with
a stage prop. Three or four beefy security guards appear from out of
nowhere and put one hand on the shoulder of the instigator while keeping
the other glued to their headsets. Impromptu commercial break. The rest
of the episode is lovey-dovey and anticlimactic as host gives moving
speech to unite the world in peace. Side Note: Didn’t anyone learn after
Geraldo Rivera got a free (albeit sloppy) nose job?
Victims Of Shark Attacks/Godzilla/Rampaging
Free-Range Chickens
Victims are promenaded onto the stage and bathed in a shower of
pity. They share their horrifying tale, followed by a montage of insurance
photos showcasing gouge marks, stretch marks, and bullet holes. 911
call is played over loudspeakers while camera lingers on the victim
as he/she relives the event in all of its audible terror. Victim goes
into convulsions/shock/epileptic fit. Cut to commercial break. 911 Operator
comes on stage and hugs victim. Victim shares with the audience how
the operator, by doing their job, is the most compassionate soul to
grace the earth. Host fishes for hopeful catch-phrase from victim in
spite of their unfortunate incident. Something along the lines of: “Even
though that grizzly bear sky dived into my house, ate my child and flossed
with the umbilical cord, I’ve found that life is nothing more than sunshine
and rainbows.” Upbeat show-theme crescendo as credits roll. Side Note:
There’s a little Roman spectator in all of us that loves to see death
and carnage.
I haven’t seen too many
variations on these episodes. The audience is always the same. One or
two big mamas who scream and spit at two thousand words a minute while
flailing their arms and telling the studio guests how they should act,
four or five skinny housewives and young understanding under-graduates
who really feel for the other person’s point of view, a few dozen people
who strive to enforce their ethnic background of choice’s stereotype,
someone who says something stupid (i.e. “YOU SUCK, KATHIE LEE!”) just
to get a rise out of the crowd, and a partridge in a pear tree.
Maybe I’m just bitter after
Morton Downey Jr. got taken off the air, but talk shows these days have
degenerated into a cesspool of bleeding-heart backwash, holding the
freaks and social deviants up on a pedestal. It just seems so wrong
not only to make celebrities out of convicts, but to flood the networks
with this brand of familial dysfunction until it’s accepted as normal?!
It would be one thing if the guests brought on were counseled or helped
for their fetishes and lack of syntax savvy, but they’re not. They’re
exploited (all the guests get for going on the show are plane tickets
and a place to stay before the show, not many know this), publicly humiliated,
and shooed off the stage for the next rare bird. Instead of helping
these morons, these shows are breeding morons. But ratings are law,
and maybe a polluted dose of reality (however monstrous) is better than
the sacchariny smack of a soap opera. Just as long as I don’t have to
watch either.
What
do you think America? Leave
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