{"id":541,"date":"2005-07-14T19:45:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-14T19:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2005\/07\/14\/541\/"},"modified":"2005-07-14T19:45:00","modified_gmt":"2005-07-14T19:45:00","slug":"541","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=541","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

PBS INFECTED BY REALITY: I was watching \u201cCooking Under Fire\u201d on PBS tonight, a \u201chaute cuisine\u201d version of a reality show. Yes, unfortunately the reality trend has also infected PBS. Sort of like Night of the Living Dead. You\u2019d have hoped that PBS would have held out and would have stood up for something higher in terms of television quality. I thought that\u2019s what PBS was there for. Guess not.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t watched C.U.F., it\u2019s a restaurant version of the Trump reality show. The winner gets a kitchen job in a fancy New York City restaurant. Tonight they were down to three candidates, all women. Before they set \u2018em loose in the kitchen, the big guys made each of the young chefs say why they were better than the other two. So the first two went into the testosterone mode, \u201cI\u2019m the best; the other two stink, they\u2019re too weak, too cutesy\u201d.<\/p>\n

The third one was named Autumn. Autumn Maddox<\/a> from Seattle. She told the inquisition that she wasn’t better; she was different. The biggest of the big men \u2013 the guy who would hire the winner – did a double take. During the cook-off he asked her, what did you mean? She stood her ground \u2013 different, not better. Then came the inevitable judgement; sorry, babe, you wouldn\u2019t last 5 minutes in my kitchen with a lame attitude like that. But the big man gave her one last chance \u2013 and she stuck to her story: different, not better. You can guess the rest.<\/p>\n

For the past 35 years, I\u2019ve known a guy named Ray. Ray drove fuel trucks and fixed engines most of his life. In a lot of ways, he\u2019s awfully crude. But deep inside, Ray still has a soft heart. He still wants to see a better world. As I watched my girl from Seattle get trashed, I imagined Ray\u2019s reaction: he\u2019d get up from a deep slouch and with righteous indignation he’d shout \u201cgo **** yourself\u201d at the judges. Ah, dear Autumn from Seattle; just another Cordelia, the Antigone of the reality shows. I shan\u2019t forget you. I hope to get out to Seattle some day, and hope to get a table at your restaurant. I\u2019m sure it will be a very civilized place, a place with very good food, and a place where a regular guy like my friend Ray could also feel comfortable.<\/p>\n

And to PBS: next time you have your fund drive beg-a-thon, I\u2019ll probably have a reaction similar to Ray\u2019s.<\/p>\n

ANOTHER IRONY: The Space Shuttle launch was cancelled yesterday because of a faulty electronic sensor. So far, NASA engineers can’t figure out the problem; they don’t know if the sensor itself crapped out, or has a wire or connection gone bad, or is it something wrong in a computer chip. Hey, I once had a car with a problem like that; the kind of problem that a dealer charges you a grand to work on, and after six months the problem comes right back again. Glad to know that even NASA can’t deal well with faulty sensors. Also glad that I’m not gonna be in the Discovery when they finally do send it up!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PBS INFECTED BY REALITY: I was watching \u201cCooking Under Fire\u201d on PBS tonight, a \u201chaute cuisine\u201d version of a reality show. Yes, unfortunately the reality trend has also infected PBS. Sort of like Night of the Living Dead. You\u2019d have hoped that PBS would have held out and would have stood up for something higher […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}