Television Uber Alles

Saw an episode of "Trading Spouses" last night. Two mothers from very different homes trade places. Never seen the show before. Don’t watch much new television. A vegan mother was traded with an alligator-killing Cajun woman. It’s stuck with me because it was like watching a horror movie. The vegan woman was a total fucking bitch, pure self-righteousness of the store-bought kind. Hates killing or wearing animals but she isn’t against torturing her kids. I know these shows are cut together to show the worst of everybody, but they didn’t have to look far with this woman. Of course, the Cajun was down-to-earth and likable.

I fear fascism from the right, but liberal fascism is right up there. The cities will be patrolled by members of the suede/denim secret police (from the Dead Kennedy’s "California Uber Alles.") I don’t know, there's something about this woman, with her squealing friends who look like they worship "Sex and the City," which incidentally seems like a retelling of Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl--am I being observant, or is this mentioned over and over again? Saw that show only once in a hotel room somewhere, and they were talking about cock size and I thought, haven’t they already had this conversation? Anyway, vegan women, early thirties, husband-desperate, perfectly cut hair, expensive clothes, one wearing a shirt that says "Vegan" tight to her chest. People can be hateful.

And I’m hateful for saying that. I’m sure the woman with the stupid t-shirt has family, people who love her, people who she loves. I’m sure the woman who’s a tyrant to her children had tyrannical parents of her own. But this mother told a ten-year-old boy that he was not going to live to forty if he kept eating meat. A ten-year old. This is cruelty--similar to telling him that he would burn in the fires of hell. In fact, there’s no difference between far-right Christianity and her brand of veganism. Nothing against veganism, really, but no one’s life should be dictated by one idea. I imagine this woman had some terribly fucked-up parents--you could see it in her eyes. Sad really, I should be sympathetic or ignore it, but this type of wisdom never seems to arrive.

A lot to take from a TV show. Got me thinking about people in general, again. If I were in charge, I would probably be a fascist myself, jailing people for being insipid and annoying. I would be the warden, banishing myself to solitary confinement.