Word: montel
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...MONTEL WILLIAMS A harassment suit claims he groped employees and conducted meetings in his skivvies...
...carries with it [sic] significant responsibility." What with V chips and elections looming, politicians and moguls were all doing their best to appear high-minded. But--in New York City, at any rate--you could have quickly subverted the mood by flipping over to the local Fox station, where Montel Williams, even more ostensibly concerned than the White House aggregation, presided as a psychiatrist asked a sexually adventuresome teenage bride, "What is it about pain that makes you feel good?" "I can't explain," she replied, adding rhetorically, "Why do you like chocolate pudding...
This juxtaposition prompts a number of related observations. One: even as it promised reform, the television industry was up to its old tricks, pumping out sleaze right under the President's nose (in a sort of postmodern, electronic sense). Two: Montel's show could be read as an inadvertent discourse on the differing tastes and points of view that will make a coherent ratings system for TV so maddeningly difficult to implement. And three: this writer was looking for a way to watch TV and call it work...
Offhand I'd say about 10% of what I caught in my nonscientific sampling was exactly the kind of fare you'd want a V chip for. I mean, no one could object to blocking a five-year-old from watching Montel Williams, although I think that by the age of 12 a child should be able to appreciate the show for what it reveals about the stagey sanctimony of many public figures, and about the public's eagerness to be exploited for fame or fortune; these are valuable life lessons. The real problem with the V-chip system...
...enough, and you hear references to unpaid bills, to welfare, to 12-hour workdays and double shifts. And this is the real shame of the talks: that they take lives bent out of shape by poverty and hold them up as entertaining exhibits. An announcement appearing between segments of Montel says it all: the show is looking for "pregnant women who sell their bodies to make ends meet...