We go willingly into the wonderful wasteland of television because we feel safe. We feel safe because we presume to be protected by that hard wall of phosphorescent glass. But where our eyes and ears go our mind follows and our spirit is led. It may be an illicit child, but the parentage is not in question. It's a high stakes game with audience share as the prize.
Audience share means money and the Hollywood heart of popular culture pumps green blood.
Jerry Springer will undoubtedly find profound inspiration in the blatant assault on the sanctity of marriage in the endless game of ratings. Gratefully there are vastly more important and hopefully more meaningful ways to measure the progress of humankind than mass media and icons of popular culture. Those of us caught up in movies and media forget of course that by most standards we are nothing more than court jesters, dancing in our silly hats until the laughter fades and we can be forgotten. I hope at least that most of what we do to crack the walls of culture is forgotten. Unfortunately, the cracks remain.