The Gods Save Me From the Stupid!

Please let me live and educate someone - anyone!

I seem to be surrounded by the unbelievably stupid. They are everywhere. On the telly especially, I suppose - the television attracts really abysmally stupid people. Without writers, this was underscored by the incredible amount of the incredulous - all serving themselves up for the lowest common denominator!

I sound like Charles Emerson Winchester III (brilliantly played by David Ogden Stiers, one of my personal favourites - see Doc Hollywood) from M*A*S*H, but honestly it is staggering how dumb John Q. Public is. I am always saying that television panders to the lowest common denominator, which is really low. And reality shows are the living proof.

Tonight we watched Wednesday night's episode of Wife Swap - talk about the lowest common denominator! This is it. They find one family that is intelligent, has an overdeveloped sense of micromanagement of their kids and a big house - usually immaculate.

The other family is usually uneducated, in a hovel or a (this time) a trailer home, and so unregimented that they might benefit more from Supernanny than this. However, no matter how negative the mix, both families come away learning something. This episode had a woman who had her two daughters overtaxed in activities - house cleaning, sports and learning (if you can believe it) Latin; she had thin lips and they disappeared entirely when she was angry or frustrated. She and her husband have a huge house that was immaculate - she farmed out the cleaning to her workaholic office husband and the daughters as she only liked to do ironing (for the life of me, I cannot imagine why).

The other family had a woman who was rather corpulent but with a good sense of humour, let her kids do anything they wanted, eat all the crap in the world and was slovenly - in their tiny trailer home that was going everywhere with their (sitting down?) carnival! Can you say gypsies? I have nothing against gypsies and I know they call themselves travelers, but we know that thievery goes well with cheesy carnies and bad rides that only by a miracle pass the "physical". They homeschool their three bratty kids.

The woman with the overdeveloped "keep the kids" busy attitude went to become mother and wife to the carny owner. The overwieght woman went to live in what had to look like a palatial estate with the boring office guy. She walked in and almost fell over from how clean it was. The other woman would not sleep in the trailer. She said it was too close, but the fact is had it been clean she might - maybe - have tried it. However, it was a pigsty.

The carny woman introduced fun and not living by a rigid schedule and threw out the dancing, golf and latin lessons. She had the husband take all of the classes the duaghters took after he completed his day of work. She tried to get them to live in a trailer but while it looked clean, they showed flies on the window and I know I was turning green. They wouldn't do it. I can't hold it against them. I wouldn't either.

The kids with the carny had no structure. They'd hang out at the carny the whole time, they were corpulent as well - the oldest child at ten was considerably overwieght. They ate nothing but the food served at the carny - disgusting. I've tried to eat at carnivals. Other than the soft ice cream, I wouldn't touch the food. It is not digestable.

The kids in the palatial estate had too much structure and no relationship with their parents. They did nothing but school and sports and weren't being kids. They had no idea what to talk about at the dinner table. It was amazing.

The carny kids could not speak English. It was their only language. Luis commented that if they are just growing up to carny people, so what if their English was appalling. So what? It does not matter what you do in life. You should be able to speak your own language flawlessly.

Ugh.

And there it is, folks... the lowest common denominator!