Mediacrity!

by William Ham

Okay, fellow pop culcha junkies, time to roll up your sleeves and secure those belts firmly ’round your biceps – get ready for the MASS MEDIA MAINLINE! (Please don’t nod out until all the nominees have been denounced.)

The End of Civilization as We Know It… On the Next Montel: I dunno about you, but I’m just a little sick and tired of the so-called moral exemplars of this country spending all their time denigrating afternoon talk shows. “Irresponsible,” they say. “Out of control.” “Immoral.” Oh, puh-leeze! Any truly smart shut-in could tell you that these shows are a source of serious, responsible journalism that makes the Ted Koppels of the world look like fluff-mongers. Don’t believe me? Just take a gander at this randomly-selected sampling of upcoming tawk-show topix and you tell me they don’t deal with the pressing issue of our times:

Ricki Lake – “Stop Sleeping With My Roommate’s Corpse!”

Rolanda – “Old Lawn Ornaments and the Midget Hermaphrodites that Love Them”

Richard Bey – “Your Pet Monkey Gave Me the Clap”

Jenny Jones – “Female Tax Accountants Who Want to Shave Ed Asner”

Geraldo – “White Supremacist Fashion Show Semi-Finals”

Donahue – “I Paid a Lot for a Muffler and Forty-Six People Died”

Oprah – “I’ll Give Each of You Twenty Bucks if You Watch. Okay, Twenty-Five.”

See? Apology accepted.