One Sunday night, I suspect, we’ll tune to C-Span3’ s discussion with the author of American history to instead find, “C-Span’s Third Annual Library of Congress’ 12 Hottest Librarians — the Thong Finals.”
These days, it hardly matters how many channels your cable/satellite operator provides; it doesn’t matter what the channels are called. The channel is odds on to be loaded with landfill.
The History Channel, as a prime and prime-time example, remains devoted to its most recent mission: replacing legitimate, authoritative and compelling programming with lowest common contaminator waste.
Increasingly, History Channel’s legit stuff — its history programming — has been relegated to non-prime time slots. That, of course, excludes HC’s five-part “History of Sex,”which has a way of finding itself repeated at more favorable times.
Tuesday in prime time, HC debuts its latest betrayal of its name and promise: “American Daredevils.”
This one’s highly recommended for those who regard video of people being thrown head-first from galloping horses and anyone being hit in the crotch by anything as funny.
“American Daredevils” might’ve made a decent, one-hour documentary— stunt guys who travel country fair circuits making a living by trying to walk away after trying to kill themselves.
But as a series, it’s loaded with transparent requisites of the popular — and soon to be played out — trailer trash genre, including:
- Recurring characters with names such as Spanky, Dr. Danger, Mr. Dizzy and Spanky, Jr. They’re all on board each week, to perhaps cripple or kill themselves for America’s viewing pleasure.
- Tattoos? All ya want.
- Bad language? Naturally.
- People being crushed or otherwise hurt performing stunts—jumping off the roof of the tallest building on Main Street; motorcycle jumping over rows of school buses down at the fair grounds—that threaten limb and life? Yep, the History Channel is there.
- Fiery crashes? Brother, bring your sticks and marshmallows.
One stand-alone image is of a helmet — a helmet engulfed in flames. That’s just so there’s no mistaking where the History Channel’s head is now fixed.
And there are close-ups of expectant folks in the audiences, especially children.
Of course, we wonder if these spectators would prefer to see Spanky or Dr. Danger succeed, die or just be mangled and carbonized to the point where he has to be sprayed by a fire extinguisher before he’s strapped onto a gurney, then removed by ambulance.
But some of us aren’t likely to wonder for long. Although the odds against it continue to grow, there must be something better on. To think some of us once tuned to the History Channel to provide such relief.
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While we’re on the subject of American history, last month newscasts brought word that the father of a 4-year-old New Jersey boy has been indicted for child endangerment in the death of a neighbor’s 6-year-old.
The younger child used his dad’s gun to accidentally shoot the older child. The five-count indictment charged the father with providing access to the .22 rifle, which had been stowed under the father’s bed.
And that brings us to the late Adlai Stevenson, former governor of Illinois, twice the losing presidential candidate to Dwight Eisenhower, and then the US Ambassador to the UN.
Porter McKeever’s 1989 biography of Stevenson reveals that at age 12, he accidentally shot and killed a neighbor’s child, Ruth Merwin, with a weapon he’d been told by an older boy was not loaded.
At the time, 1912, Stevenson’s father, Adlai, Sr., was the former vice president of the US under Grover Cleveland.
The lethal accident occurred in the Stevenson’s home. The gun — a.22 rifle — belonged to his father. It had been stowed it in the attic. No legal action was taken.