Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 29, 1993 TAG: 9303290070
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This has been caused by my much-criticized habit of changing channels constantly.
I don't apologize.
You can't go very far around the old dial these days without running into one of those talk shows that portray the human condition at its worst.
Some young lady named, say, Hildy, has a show that attracts a woman who threw gasoline on her husband and lit him when she found out he was fooling around.
If you don't hit the remote, the wife, her husband - swathed in bandages - and the Other Woman will all be on Hildy's show.
Hildy, fashionably dressed and as cute as she can be, draws out all of the horrible details.
"I told him I'd burn him if he ever took up with another woman," the wife says. "He knows that."
The husband, seated between the two women, stirs in his bandages and says, "Ooomph!"
"A girl like I is always the victim," says the Other Woman. "If I had knowed that Clyde Lee was married, I never would have done nothing wrong with him. I especially wouldn't have done nothing wrong with him if I had knowed his wife was going to barbecue him."
The camera shows the wronged wife. She is smiling. (Strangely, many of these people who appear on shows like Hildy's apparently eat fast food only, but they all have beautiful teeth.)
"I burnt him, and I'd do it again," the wife says.
"Ooomph!" the husband says.
"A girl like I is always the victim," the Other Woman says.
Then, Hildy, smiling demurely, throws all three of them to the audience - which is largely composed of female barbarians who want everybody's blood, including poor Clyde Lee's.
"You're a chippy if I ever saw one," one of these females tell the Other Woman. "You should have known he was married."
The Other Woman smiles nervously and toys with the strap on one of her spiked shoes.
"Justice is mine, sayeth the Lord," another woman tells the wife, whose mascara has begun to run.
"It's your fault, and I'm glad you got got burned, you worm," another woman tells Clyde Lee, who is in obvious pain and says, "Ooomph!"
"Tomorrow, we have Edna Mae and Bobby Lee, who stole all of Edna Mae's mother's money so they could live in sin - along, of course, with Electra Ann, the mother," says Hildy, animatedly dancing around.
You've got to zap stuff like that if you don't want to go nuts and set the cat on fire.
by CNB