Artitudes:

How Low Can Television Go?

Modern love in America is dead. We have watched its slow death pass across our television sets for years, replaced by pay-per-view consumerism, insider-scoop muck raking and rigged game shows. But the current trends in television descended to new levels of ugly on the Fox network Tuesday night with Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?..

The equation was simple: you start with 50 girls who are willing to make money-grubbing whores of themselves on prime time television, strip off their clothes and personal dignity with the swimsuit competition and beg for a better life with a behind-the-screen millionaire jerk-off.

Let the whole episode take place in Las Vegas (billed as the "wedding capital of the world" by Fox and, coincidentally enough, located in the only state where prostitution is legal) and roll the cameras. Jerry Springer is wincing that he didn't think of this one first.

And while the sexist, overweight, Budweiser-guzzling remote controller eats up every minute of it, executives at Fox proceed to make themselves bigger millionaires than the worthless puppet that all these girls are begging to marry.

But that's really looking at the most positive side of things. Unfortunately, the recent rise in popularity of the win-a-million game shows that has infected every network is being spoon-fed to us: the ignorant and willing public. The sad part of this phenomenon is that it plays on the hopes of the television-watching public to better their pathetic lives. People watch an asshole like Regis Philbin asking people eighth grade trivia and think, "I wish I was that smart. I wish I could win a million bucks." And it is this wish that degrades the intelligence of the American public.

As for the wedding show, sure, there were probably a good number of people who were similarly nauseated; but without a doubt the popularity of the show proves that disgusted amazement wasn't the only thing that drove the ratings up. Viewers wanted to be those people on TV. Sadly, people in the real world wish the same fate for themselves. When the disillusionment and deception upon which this program is built affects the public in this way, it can only be explained as a crime against humanity and a perversion of the institution of loving human relationships.

In the meantime, I will wait anxiously for the next variation of the game: Who Wants to Kill a Multi-Millionaire?.