Popular debasement

Forget video games - the new sport is embarrassing oneself on TV, and it's a game anyone can play. In fact, the less intelligent and more narcissistic one is, the easier it is to be picked to appear. The most popular venues on TV include "Maury Povich" and "Jerry Springer" (both syndicated by NBC/Universal), and a new program that sinks to the bottom of the human fish tank: "Moment of Truth" on FOX.

Each show tries to out-slime the other and sponsors are lined up to cash in. Of course these are not your high-end advertisers like BMW and The Bahamas Tourist Board. The ads you see on these shows are for the rent-to-own appliance stores, schools specializing in non-accredited "degrees" paid for by the government and bottom-dwelling "We Can Finance Anyone!" used-car vampires.

Maury Povich used to be a legitimate news anchor in Los Angeles, but hosting shows with themes such as "I Slept With My Wife's Sister" and "Was This Hottie Born a Woman?" must be more remunerative. One of his biggest grabbers is the paternity test show, in which a woman brings a loser husband or boyfriend on to prove he is the daddy of at least one of her children. The guy invariably says, "Nope! That baby don't look nothing like me." Then Maury reveals the results. Either the poor schlub is the father, in which case he has to pony up child support; or he's not the father, which means the woman had at least one other sexual partner. One woman had Maury give paternity tests to three guys and never hit a winner.

What exactly do the people who appear on the show receive? A free trip to New York, a couple of steaks at the hotel and a fleeting moment in the spotlight. What does it cost the guest who goes on the show? Perhaps a marriage or a job, depending on the "shocking secret" revealed.

Jerry Springer still maintains political aspirations even though while a city councilman in Cincinnati, he was caught paying a prostitute with a check and had to resign. This man has a law degree and is obviously very intelligent, but his guests are even lower on the human evolutionary scale than Maury's. "I Love My Pig More Than My Wife" is a typical show title. The guests on these shows just aren't smart enough to know that they are the joke at which the audience is laughing.

"Moment of Truth" allowed a young woman named Lauren Cleari to trash her marriage and ruin her policeman/hubby's life in one magic moment. For a chance at $100,000, she answered "yes" to this question, asked by her ex-boyfriend on national television in prime time: "Do you believe I'm the man you should be married to?" The audience gasped. The husband dropped his head into his hands. Unfortunately Lauren didn't win the money because a later question tripped her up, but she certainly was responsible for a lot of great drama.

My former secretary "Janet" once appeared on another TV sleazefest, "The Gordon Elliott Show." She was married at the time, but still liked to go out and party all night at the clubs without her husband. She and her spouse taped the show to air their dispute, and then "Janet" and I watched it on the TV in our office a few weeks later. Our eyes were on the screen as she told her story and the audience whooped and hollered for her, apparently believing that her partying was just fine. Meanwhile, the clueless husband sat there and tried to explain that his marriage might be better served by her staying home and showing up on time for her job instead of calling in sick three days a week. The audience jeered at him. "Janet" just smiled at me. It was her moment.