Wednesday, December 06, 2006

DNA Testing

Daytime television is unlike anything else out there. In fact, it is horrific. There are soap operas, court shows, and a plethora of talk shows. Each is worse than the one that came before it. Yet we watch and watch and watch. These shows have been around for years and don’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon.
The most unsettling shows in the daytime category have to be talk shows. It seems as though the producers of talk shows only have a handful of show topics that they recycle and regurgitate over and over again. The most overdone of these is the dna testing show.
How many times have you turned on your tv and seen some poor woman getting berated by an audience of strangers because she is there for some free dna testing? I have seen this show so many times it makes me sick. If a woman has no idea who her baby’s daddy is, thank god there is the Maury show out there to help her figure that mystery out. After all, dna testing can be very expensive and single moms may be the last group of people out there that could afford such a thing.
If I was being honest, I would have to say that as much as I am disgusted by the dna testing shows, I am equally enthralled and entertained. This is the human comedy/tragedy at its best. You have two people that once were close, if only for a night and now they cannot stand each other.
In other situations you have a father that just decided one day that he no longer wanted the responsibility and so he began to deny fathering his children. Either way, these situations are very sad. Yet we watch and watch and watch.
The ever-popular dna testing talk shows are hard to watch at times. There is a lot of pain, frustration, anxiety, and emotion involved. The bottom line is that in the midst of all this there is a child that needs to be taken care of. Whether or not the child’s parents are standup, responsible people the focus should be on the child. If someone is caught in a situation that requires dna testing, you can be sure that something somewhere went terribly wrong.
For some reason, we keep watching. Human tragedy at its finest, right? Are the people who produce the show the sick people here or is it the people who watch? I have to incriminate myself here and go with the second choice.