Television

Yeah, I have been ranting a bit lately, but the lack of quality television, and in fact the rather putrid offerings given to viewers, has led directly to this subject.

The first object of my derision is the show Toddlers and Tiaras, on TLC.  Simply, this is child porn, a literal pedophiles paradise.  Little girls as young as five years old are made up to look like Hollywood starlets, or more aptly, Hollywood strumpets; make-up, hair extensions and all.


(One mother even claimed she used Botox on her daughter, but when the media got wind of this tidbit she denied ever doing so.)

The poor tykes are then paraded around in gowns and bathing suits, and run through a talent competition, like a mini-Miss America pageant, but I don’t think these kids are given much choice. And some of those bathing suits are way too tight.  I know I wouldn’t let my daughter wear them.  Plus, the parents are way over the top.  Talk about living vicariously, I think some of these stage parents – and yes, the men are as bad as the women – would actually get up on stage themselves if allowed.  A few of these kids say they like what they are doing, but I would like to do a follow-up study ten years down the road, and see how these kids fared.

The next object of my scorn is the MTV show 16 and Pregnant.  This show should really be titled 16, Pregnant and Stupid.  There was even a rumor going around that girls were getting pregnant on purpose, just to get on the show.  Seems everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame.  Having a child is serious business, and for MTV to use the plight of a child having a child for ratings is deplorable.  But I expect no better from MTV, which has also brought us such gems as The Real World and The Jersey Shore.  I personally think, if they could get away with it, the show would be called 13 and Pregnant.  Now that would generate ratings.

My last target for today is a show that airs locally on WFME and is called Open Forum.  It is hosted by my favorite prognosticator, and the previous object of my contempt, the one and only Harold Camping.  The show mainly consists of old Harold sitting in a chair and answering phone calls about scripture from fawning followers.  He still claims the world is going to end, but this time it will be on October 21, 2012, and that his previous error in placing the starting point on last May 21 was not really an error, just a misreading of signs.  It’s all in the Bible, he claims.  Would someone give this old man his medicine.  But my real contempt is now reserved for the people who continue to believe in this huckster.  They call his show and see fit to defend Harold as if he were a wayward child, not some charlatan abusing his followers, and he eats it up with a spoon.  I’m sure he isn’t turning down any donations they send his way.  I believe Harold lives by the dictum “Never give a sucker an even break.”  This would be comical if it wasn’t true.

These are just three of the shows I find insulting, but anyone who watches television with any regularity knows there are hundreds more.  You can count the number of good shows on your hands, and maybe one or two toes.  It wasn’t nicknamed the ”boob tube” for nothing.