(3089/898) In defense of talk shows

1537) [A]nyone who watches them knows [that TV talk shows] are one of the most excruciatingly moralistic forums the culture has to offer. Disturbing and sometimes disgusting, yes, but their business is to preach the middle-class virtues of responsibility, reason and self-control. [...] All right, the subject are often lurid and even bizarre [...] [but] the moral is always loud and clear: Respect yourself, listen to others, stop beating on your wife. [...]

There is something morally reprehensible about the talks [...] Watch for a few hours, and you get the claustrophobic sense of lives that have never seen the light of external judgment, of people who have never before been listened to, and certainly never been taken seriously if they were. "What kind of people would let themselves be humiliated like this?" is often asked, sniffily, by the shows' detractors. And the answer, for the most part, is people who are so needy — of social support, of education, of material resources and self-esteem — that they mistake being the center of attention for being actually loved and respected.

What the talks are about, in large part, is poverty and the distortions it visits on the human spirit. You'll never find investment bankers bickering on Rolanda, or the host of Gabrielle recommending therapy to sobbing professors. With few exceptions, guests are drawn from trailer parks and tenements, from bleak streets and narrow, crowded rooms. Listen long enough, and you hear references to unpaid bills, to welfare, to 12-hour workdays and double shifts. And this is the real shame of the talks: that they take lives bent out of shape by poverty and hold them up as entertaining exhibits. [...]

This is class exploitation, pure and simple. [...] It's is easy enough for those who can afford spacious homes and private therapy to sneer at their financial inferiors and label their pathetic moments of stardom vulgar. But if I had a talk show, it would feature a whole different cast of characters and category of crimes than you'll ever find on the talks: "CEOs who rake in millions while their employees get downsized" would be an obvious theme, along with "Senators who voted for welfare and Medicaid cuts" - and, if he'll agree to appear, "well-fed Republicans who dithered about talk shows while trailer-park residents slipped into madness and despair."

Barbara Ehrenreich
"In Defense of Talk Shows"
Time (12/4/1995)