The Bat Flu mess, together with the decline of our mainstream media, has caused me to watch more cable television. As a newspaper columnist who shares valuable insights with his readers, this overexposure to mediocrity leads me to share some observations about some of the more popular shows.
The bumblers who have spent years trying to find treasure on The Curse of Oak Island are never going to find anything worth 15 cents. But they will unearth a rabble of fellow fools whose research hints that the treasure is (a) really somewhere beneath Oak Island, and (b) was hidden there by either wandering Vikings or the prophet Isaiah.
The hardworking miners on Gold Rush who seek gold-ore riches in Alaska would be financially better off if they rented their construction equipment to other gold prospectors and lived off the rental fees.
The Ice Road Truckers drive mammoth tractor-trailer rigs at speed over frozen roads and highways in the Great White North. These slip-sliding speedsters are either in the grip of dangerous drugs or should be.
No American twit tricked out in his Indiana Jones outfit is going to solve the mysteries of the pyramids, find Atlantis, or locate the literary agent whose clients penned the Dead Sea Scrolls. No British twit in a Barbour coat is going to snare the Loch Ness Monster.
You can watch a thousand re-runs of Jeopardy, but you are never going to answer more than six $500 questions in a given week. If that doesn’t depress you oldsters, Wheel of Fortune’s Vanna White turned 64 in February.
Adolf Hitler did not escape from his Berlin bunker in 1945. Nor did he spend his declining years as a grocer in Buenos Aires or Tupelo. If the Israelis couldn’t find him, no whispering “reality show” host can.
No matter how loudly you excoriate them during pre-dinner cocktail time, guests of any sex on any network on any topic are not going to stop bellowing at you as they spew talking points at 200 words per minute.
With the exception of Greg Gutfeld, none of today’s late-night comedians is any funnier than an ISIS training film.
Anything someone is trying to sell you at three a.m. is something you’re better off without. A dead man, Larry King, peddles prostate remedies in the wee hours. Pat Boone, who is not dead, promotes painkillers without acting his age.
Some Medicare plans “might” provide dental care; rides to your doctor, eyeglasses, and “could” add money back to your Social Security check. Look up “could” and “might” in your dictionary. The definitions could surprise you.
Now that you’re armed with some cable antidotes, I have some helpful advice to the telemarketers and direct mail solicitors who stalk me with the tenacity of a starving wolverine. Listen up, you parasites.
I am never going to a “free” dinner at some cheesy restaurant where a “financial advisor” will show me the road to a secure, worry-free retirement. Maybe he can, but not over a third-rate meal at a second-rate restaurant.
Even if you kidnap my pet, Charles the Cat, and hold him for ransom you will not sell me an extended warranty program for my automobile.
Try as you may, you are not going to get my credit card numbers, my bank account numbers, my Social Security number, or my Amazon profile information. And I’m not going to send money to Nigeria.
You can reincarnate Telly Savalas and have him call to say that sheriff’s deputies will arrest me within the hour unless I pay some bogus overdue tax bill. Even then I will not “press One to reply.”
I consulted an ear doctor in 2006. In the years since, every tinhorn hearing aid manufacturer this side of Menlo Park has flooded my mail with “jaw-dropping” offers. I am emotionally attached to my ear trumpet. Let me alone.
Some of the above should help you to focus your television viewing on important issues—such as counting the times Sean Hannity interrupts his guests each evening or how many times a day Mike Lindell offers you a My Pillow product. Or you could spend more time in prayer, beseeching the Almighty to not let your female grandkids grow up to be the Real Housewives of [home town name goes here].
William Jeanes lives in Dinsmor.
