Twelve Most Worthless Things
I've Seen on TV

by D. J. Herda

We’re all guilty.  Everybody does it.  We tune in to watch a little television, to take our minds off the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and, despite the fact that we know it’s a meaningless coma-inducing waste of time, we continue to watch until the bitter end.

And then, of course, we regret having done so.

How to change things?  Well, since they say that confession is good for the soul, here is my attempt at wiping the slate clean.  Forthwith: the twelve most worthless things I’ve seen on TV lately.

1. American Idol.  I confess that, until this season, I hadn’t watched a single episode of what always appeared to me to be a moronic waste of perfectly good time.  And then I turned in.  Now, at last, I see what all the fuss is about.  It’s fun to watch a bunch of losers--the vast majority of whom are absolutely talentless and the rest, only minimally gifted--and to cheer on our favorites.  It’s also fun to watch people get kicked off the show.  Americans, after all, love to share their misery.  It’s our Puritanical heritage.

Of course, the judges are a hoot, as well.  Take Randy, who is big and fat and apparently dumb as a rock and talks like a 14-year-old would talk…if he came from the hood and had no class whatsoever.  And Paula Abdul, my favorite crybaby in the world.  If you’re going to stumble through life as a neurotic has-been, you’d might as well look good doing it.  And, finally, Simon.  He’s the only one I really respect, because he owns the rights to the show and all of its multitudinous spin-offs and has made gazillions of dollars from preying upon the very people he spends several hours a week trashing.  Only in America.

2. Perry Mason.  Honest to God.  I saw it the other day at three in the morning on our local access channel, which has a confirmed Nielsen rating of 7.  And that’s people, not points.

Anyway, despite the fact that I really used to love the show when I was a kid, I found it to be horribly written, poorly directed, and amateurishly presented.  The only person in the entire cast who could act even a little was Raymond Burr, and that’s only because he was simply being himself.

3. Girls Gone Wild.  Maybe I’m past my sexual prime, or maybe I never found drunks--even attractive, well-built drunks--all that alluring, but these infomercials are absolutely worthless.  Nonstop music, nonstop jiggling, nonstop giggling, and an endless barrage of double entendres.  And they recently let the owner/creator out of prison?  You tell me.

5. Bill O’Reilly.  Ever since he beat the rap on that ex-employee who had leveled sexual harassment charges against him a couple of years ago, O’Reilly has become unbelievably sanctimonious.  He never talks anymore, he lectures.  He doesn’t smile, he smirks.  I understand that he’s worth a lot of money and that he is one of the major reasons for the success of Fox News, but come on.  Enough is enough.

6. Geraldo Riviera.  And, while we’re on the subject of Fox News, I’d like to thank Gerry, as his close friends call him, for being the biggest horse’s ass on prime-time television for the past 30 years.  From his early days of exposing on live network TV the long-hidden secret vault of mobster Al Capone (the one that, after weeks of self-aggrandizing promotion, contained nothing more than an empty beer bottle) right down to the present, where Riviera dogmatically defends his Hispanic heritage by championing the bottomless well of morality and the irreplaceable economic contribution of illegal immigrants to American society.  A champion of the rights of little guys everywhere, he once told that couple convicted of keeping dozens of foster children locked in cages for hours and even days on end, “Keep it up, Bro.  Our prayers are with you.”

8. Drew Peterson.  You remember him…the ex-cop who has lost more wives than Mickey Rooney?  If there is a student of psychology anywhere in the world who can’t see that the guy is a certifiable sociopath, I’d like to meet him.  Until then, who cares how hard poor Drew’s life has become since disposing of his most recent wife?

9. Nancy Grace.  I mean, do all of those women calling in their praises really believe that N. G. gives a rat’s ass what they think of her?  The woman is rude, condescending, arrogant, and not especially heavily weighted toward the bright end of the rainbow, if you know what I mean.  But what she lacks in social grace, I grant you, she more than makes up for in phoniness.  I love the way her voice shifts from animated to quivering at the flick of a switch when she I.D.s the loss of yet one more American hero in Iraq.

10. Bonanza.  Now, I must admit that, even as a kid, I was never a big Bonanza fan. That whiney Little Joe or whatever the name of that character is used to bother the hell out of me.  Grow up, for chrissake!  Now that daily reruns are back, I’ve had an opportunity to watch some of the episodes I’d missed earlier.  And you know what? They’re even worse than I’d remembered.  Can you believe a line such as “I’m going to get even with you, Ben Cartwright, even if it’s the last thing I ever do.”  Which, of course, it turns out to be.

11.) Billy Mays Commercials.  You remember him…the guy who says, “Hi. Billy Mays, here, with the amazing new Oxy-Swab, the remarkable high-energy pick-up drink in a box.  You’ll never clean another toilet.  Just spray a little on a sponge and the dust mites are gone!”  All shouted out, of course, at a decibel level approximately equivalent to that of a railroad locomotive passing through a tunnel made out of aluminum foil.

12. Greta van Sustern.  We’re back at Fox News, again, which takes the trifecta this month by presenting each night the absolutely worst interviewer on all of television.

Yet, beneath that grating, high-pitched whine of a voice, there lies an understanding of news not heretofore matched on national TV: she is absolutely clueless.  The woman knows nothing about asking questions or listening to the answers before asking the same questions all over again, albeit in slightly different words, sometimes three or four times in a row.  As if that weren’t enough, she apparently grew up in a large family because, when the conversation gets heated, her voice--already pitched at two octaves above middle “C”--rises to the intensity of that of an Iowa pig farmer calling in the sows.  Soo-ey!

Allegedly a former defense attorney, van Sustern would have been the kind of lawyer who would have struck fear into the heart of any man…any man dumb enough to have hired her, that is.  For everyone else in the courtroom, she must have been a real stitch.

Yes, that’s right, for having read through this month’s commentary from start to finish (or, more likely, having been smart enough to have jumped over all that stuff in the middle right to this special Bonus Offer), I am presenting you with a free gift in the form of one extra Twelve Most Worthless Things I’ve Seen on TV entry.  Are you ready? Because here it is:

And I…am D. J. Herda

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D. J. Herda is President of the American Society of Authors and Writers (http://amsaw.org), an organization made up of authors, writers, editors, publishers, agents, directors, producers, and other media professionals who rely upon the printed word in the creation of quality literature and entertainment.  He is a member of the Author's Guild, a former member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and a former member of the National Press Club.  He has published more than 80 books and several hundred thousand articles, short stories, columns, interviews, plays, and scripts.
 

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