Pseudo-intellectual nonsense
So, TLC is possibly the most intellectually bankrupt network on tv. They have not one but TWO shows about dudes with multiple wives. There’s 19 Kids and Counting, a show about the Dugger family, Michelle & Jim-Bob, raising 19 kids. Aside from being boring to watch, the Duggers regularly use their “fame” to spearhead anti-gay and lesbian campaigns, including a state-wide robo-call against marriage equality in Arkansas. They have a late-night talk show, All About Sex, during which the hostesses seem to go on and on about how they mostly try to avoid sex with their spouses/lovers. Well, except Margaret Cho, she’s down for anything. All these shows have pseudo-intellectual catch phrases, “We just love each other,” “Love should be multiplied, not divided,” “…somehow, we just make things work,” “Dirty, filthy, fucking.” Okay, maybe that last one isn’t so intellectual, pseudo or otherwise, but the others are just things stupid people say to sound smart or profound, or to make their lives sound provocative. These are all pretty spectacular, in an awful sort of way. Dirty, filthy, fucking just might go on my epitaph. However, we might have a new top of the heap from one of TLC’s new reality train-wreck, My Big Fat Beautiful Life, it’s a show about this lady who’s overweight because of a medical condition. but loving life just the same. Now, anybody who puts their life on tv, or on a blog… is open to criticism, medical condition or no. Myself included. THAT SAID… This lady’s, sort of, life motto, just strikes me as totally vacuous, “I only have this one life to live, and it damn sure better count.”
I only have this one life to live, and it damn sure better count, it’s so… motivational speaker-esque. It’s just a bunch of words that add up to nothing. Yes, we only get one shot at life, so far as we know, that’s true enough. It’s the second half of her motivational gold that bothers me. See, every life counts, for good or ill, every life counts, no damn sure betters about it. We leave footprints in the world, it happens without even trying. Whether you’re Steve Jobs, or someone’s crazy cat-lady aunt, you’re remembered, you affect the people around you. Our worry should be that at the end of our everything, we left the world a little brighter than when we entered it, not whether or not we made life “count.”
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