At the circus

A correspondent asks about yesterday's post regarding appalling TV

Didn't PP ask "And what is truth?" and isn't the ? meant to be there?
Why waste time looking at rubbish?

and I replied

I agree about wasting time looking at rubbish...but you see such things because the TV is on.
BUT I also have a bigger question about whether just ignoring this stuff is actually responsible...it is not only garbage it is demoralising and socially destructive. We shouldn't just ignore that should we?

I think this is a fairly important point. We get the TV we deserve, so we need to do something about what we don't like

The worst yet

When you ponder eternal questions like

     Does God exist?

     Who created the universe?

     What is the meaning of life?

and so on, I bet no one ever thought there was a 21st century addition to the corpus. And it is, I suggest, Will 'reality' television never end in its grossness?

In what I thought was the most predictable and excruciating quiz show yet..a handsome young 'jock' (as the Americans call sporting types) sat in a chair and was asked a range of questions, each one totting up the dollars. Of course the questions got worse and worse...including "did you look at another man's private parts in the shower after the game?"

An even worse episode (one among many) is on YouTube below...but it is sickening.

The 'hook' of the series is, of course, how much humiliation will people subject themselves to for money?

There are other questions like: why is this stuff rating? why don't people get that there is a reason why we keep some stuff private? what responsibility do networks have for ruining people's lives, marriages and if people end up chronically depressed, or if they suicide (as is reported to have happened as a result of the  Jerry Springer show)?

While this show is called The Moment of Truth. It is anything but truthful and begs all osrts of questions about the sort of world we live in.

A little bit puzzled

Surely I am not the only one to have noticed that these new plans that the sitting government keep revealing to us, the humble electorate, are all a bit desperate!

Touted by the fly-guys, Abbott et al, as the be all and end all in health policy one wonders why after 11 years in government the restructuring of hospital governance with local boards only appears to have dawned upon them in these weeks before an election. Well, one doesn't really wonder!

But it seems like policy on the run, ill-conceived, hastily thought out and responsive only to the whim of the electorate. Far from being 'aspirational' ( a word they only appear to have just discovered) it seems desperational, erratic and therefore likely to be frought with yet-to-be-conceived problems.

One wonders what next? If my memory serves me correctly we will actually begin to see fresh loaves, sliced and unsliced...raisin and sesame seed sprinkled...this will be handed out to people (probably free) as they sit watching performing elephants and big-footed clowns at the Canberra Hippodrome.

It a mad, mad world!