{"id":32811,"date":"2017-06-02T01:00:34","date_gmt":"2017-06-02T05:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32811"},"modified":"2017-05-23T11:46:58","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T15:46:58","slug":"qotd-daytime-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/06\/02\/qotd-daytime-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Daytime TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing this sentence (who can say where I\u2019ll be in an hour) at the Brooklyn Diner off Times Square (the pastrami frittata is fantastic!). I\u2019m about a block away from the set of Good Morning America<\/em>, where hundreds of decent, normal Americans are willingly turning themselves into meat props for a three-hour spectacle, two hours and forty-five minutes of which is dedicated to something someone named Kany\u00e9 said about someone else; the troubling rise in Pilates injuries; J-Lo\u2019s ass; and breaking news of a puppy making friends with a stuffed toy \u2014 from someone\u2019s Facebook page somewhere out in America. I don\u2019t actually know that\u2019s what\u2019s on today\u2019s show, but I\u2019m pretty confident it\u2019s not that far off either. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t mean to single out Good Morning America<\/em> \u2014 The Today Show<\/em> is equally vapid. It\u2019s just that Good Morning America<\/em> is fresh in my mind because I happened to watch an hour or so of it earlier this week while waiting for my car at the shop. I would have blown my brains out, but the show depleted my IQ so rapidly I couldn\u2019t manage even the most rudimentary tasks. I got so dumb, Debbie Wasserman Schultz could have beaten me at checkers. But I did learn how Victoria Beckham struggles to have it all as a working mom. I don\u2019t know how she does it. She\u2019s a trooper. <\/p>\n

And then there was the long segment on Suzy Favor Hamilton, the courageous former Olympic runner who married her college sweetheart, won a bunch of medals, started a family and a business, and then, \u201cafter one night with a Vegas call girl,\u201d decided to become a hooker herself. \u201cThat light-bulb moment in my head, wow, why shouldn\u2019t I get paid for sex?\u201d she told GMA<\/em>\u2019s Lara Spencer. We then learn that her husband knew all about her moonlighting in Vegas, but he disapproved, as all decent husbands would, don\u2019t ya know. You can read all about it in her new book (and so can her daughter). Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that \u2014 there\u2019s a book. Contain your surprise.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m not going to get all judgey here \u2014 because that<\/em> would be wrong. Hamilton says she had serious mental-health problems, and that certainly seems more than plausible. Besides, we live in an age where having addictions, conditions, disorders, and issues is often a moral get-out-of-jail-free card. I have my own \u201cissues\u201d with that. But that\u2019s a topic for another day.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

And that was that. Hamilton betrayed her family and then compounded that \u201churt\u201d by splashing it all across the country \u2014 and somehow in a matter of seconds this becomes proof of her heroic struggle<\/em>. She will have to live with this, but it was worth it because another journalist pandering to an interview subject said something that may or may not be true. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a big consumer of bipolar tell-alls, but I kind of feel like there are already more than a few out there and that it\u2019s possible \u2014 just possible \u2014 the genre didn\u2019t need one more, at least this<\/em> one more. I\u2019m sure this book helped someone, somewhere. But I resent the idea that somehow we\u2019re all expected to celebrate this woman\u2019s struggle and honesty and heroism and blah blah blah. And if we don\u2019t celebrate it, not only are we the bad guys, but our judgmentalism makes her more of a hero. <\/p>\n

It seems to me that if you don\u2019t want people to judge you, maybe you shouldn\u2019t herd your demons onto a public stage like they\u2019re contestants in a beauty pageant? <\/p>\n

Yeah, maybe her book will help someone out there. But maybe her top priority should be helping her family? I\u2019d bet the book tour isn\u2019t doing that.<\/p>\n

Jonah Goldberg, “Our Culture Makes a Virtue Out of Victimhood”, National Review<\/em><\/a>, 2015-09-18.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m writing this sentence (who can say where I\u2019ll be in an hour) at the Brooklyn Diner off Times Square (the pastrami frittata is fantastic!). I\u2019m about a block away from the set of Good Morning America, where hundreds of decent, normal Americans are willingly turning themselves into meat props for a three-hour spectacle, two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,41,13],"tags":[906,321,520,248],"class_list":["post-32811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-mentalhealth","tag-nyc","tag-prostitution","tag-realitytv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8xd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32812,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32811\/revisions\/32812"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}