Shoot Your Television

I saw on the news today that a man in Wisconsin shot his television because he was so upset about Bristol Palin making it to the finals on this year’s edition of Dancing with the Stars. Everything about that last sentence is wrong. Allow me to list the problems as I see them.

1) Let’s start at the end of the sentence, with the problem that has bothered me the longest. The show is called “Dancing with the Stars,” and even though the program has been on for several years, I have not once seen a genuine “star” in the line-up. No one should be watching this show. It is stupid, and based on a ridiculous premise that the producers have never been able to actually deliver to the audience. They should call it “Dancing with the Has-Beens” and they would have a more accurate depiction, and yet not always, which brings me to my next point.

2) Bristol Palin is not a star. Not even close. She’s not even a has-been. For Palin, we would have to rename the show “Dancing with the People who have Parents that are Quasi-Celebrities/Political Figures/Laughingstocks.” She is a teenage mother, not a star.

3) Brandy (who got her start as a pop singer and actually has done some dancing) didn’t make it to the finals. Now I don’t watch the show, so I have no idea if she’s any good or not, but I have to assume that if she has done some dancing PROFESSIONALLY, she should be ok.

4) A man shot his television over this! They had to bring in the cops, for crying out loud. Are you following me? A grown man destroyed a perfectly good TV set with a shot gun because of something that happened on TV’s worst program ever (at least before “Sarah Palin’s Alaska”, another one I refuse to watch, but which would finally give Bristol a possible claim at “stardom” however weak, but that’s never stopped the DWTS producers before).

It is this last point that gets to me the most. While the others are irksome, it is the fact that Americans have let our priorities get so out of whack. We don’t shoot our televisions when we see stories about people dying in Haiti. We don’t shoot our televisions when we see programs that degrade women and contribute to the breakdown of the family. We don’t shoot our televisions when lies are presented as scientific fact. But we are more than willing to shoot our television when we don’t get the results we want on “Dancing with the Stars.”

This leads me to two possible conclusions. Either our collective consciences have become so scarred that we should have shot our televisions years ago, or I can’t wait to see what happens when we get now judges on American Idol.