Editor's Note: Talk show obsession

By Mark Costello
Collegian Editor
January 24, 2007

Welcome back, Explorers, from a sleepy and unseasonably warm Christmas break. I hope it treated you all well, as it surely did my writers and me. One thing the break did do for me was that it allowed me to reconnect with the dregs of society known as daytime talk show television, which led directly to my choosing junk media as this week’s topic. Why do people listen to Greg Behrendt on relationship and psychological issues? The man’s a stand-up comic, for God’s sake. Jerry Springer was a City Councilman for Cincinnati who managed to serve as mayor for a year after admitting to soliciting a prostitute. Why do we turn to these people? For entertainment? Solace, comfort, laughs, tears, special interest stories? What’s the draw, the appeal? These questions and more are treated by my writers this week. Whatever the allure, the most dangerous place in the world these days is between me and the TV during The Montel Williams Show.

Why we watch these wanna-be psychologists and has-been politicians is puzzling to me, and I doubt the question is answerable within the span of one newspaper page. Whatever the reason, though, day after day we tune in to the same offal.

Happy channel surfing...

costellom4@lasalle.edu