In praise of Maury

Months ago, and you can go back over the posts and find it, I wrote about a job I was asked to do for the infamous Maury Povich Show.

Now, anyone who knows anything about me knows that I am almost always willing to do work. It's what I do. If you need an artist shot is his or her studio along with an incisive interview, all edited and packed and ready for production, I can do that. If, like the producers from the Maury show, you want some pot smoking stoner in government housing to sit for some b-roll footage for an upcoming show on who's my baby daddy, I can do that too.

Today I got the check for doing just that. Which reminds me why I do these sorts of things that, if truth be told, I would probably not do if I had a choice. Instead, when the producers called one late winter afternoon, I was all about driving out to some slummy area and getting a contact high while some inadequate parent person pretended to be interested in a slew of rowdy and badly cared for children.

See, I actually think Maury and shows like his are what is wrong with America. It is not congressmen sending pictures of their wieners that is bad for the country, that is just bad for the people who receive the pictures, I would imagine. No, I think the sort of trash TV that poisons brains and makes people stupid, that is bad for a nation. It's not just Maury and his pals, it is the mindless "reality" crap that seems to be on every channel.

See, when I had little children, we did not have cable TV and we did not spend any time watching bullshit programming. When we moved to a farm in New York, as some sort of bride, I got this dish thing that offered well over 750 million channels, every channel more shallow and banal than the next. After a few months, it went away, but not the mindless scars that had somehow permeated our collective thinking. Now that my little tiny children are full grown human people, they do and watch what they want. Why, just yesterday, they sat for 24 straight hours watching nothing more than Survivor re-runs and fake small claims cases decided by a drunk and mean spirited toupee wearing moron.

Now, where was I? Right. The check. Well, it's not enough to pay for the Italy trip, but it's going into that pot.