Just when I thought it was safe..........
to put down that remote...... Now that I have my very own outlet for my media apoplexy, I needed 24 hours to calm down enough to write. We were sitting around last night. Emily was driving home from school and we were waiting up and watching Monk (just at nine pm, not eleven). I find this to be a very engaging program (not just because half of all my relatives have some sort of OCD - am I one of them? - maybe) and one that is not too filled with the offensive and off-color to the extent that I just plain won’t watch or watch with the remote in my hand in case something dreadful appears when the kids are in the room.

So...........we’re watching Monk. Actually Rick, Chuck and I were watching Monk. Eddie was spinning on a chair and running on the treadmill, just keeping up his energy for when his big sister walked in. Chuck’s attention may have been drifting and he was leafing thru the latest MacAddict. I hope. In between ads for whatever (unlike last week’s show which actually had an ad for Paxil - if that wasn’t savy I don’t know what is. What better show to hawk SSRI’s?),
up pops Dr. Joycelyn Elders. She starts to talk about the dangers of oral contraceptives for certain women, blah, blah, blah. Rick had a chip implanted in his brain during an alien abduction - it keeps him from noticing any TV advertising and allows him to pick up where the show left off. So he does not notice what this woman is discussing or my futile attempts at a subtle throat slashing gesture to get him to turn it off. I didn’t know where she was going with her talk, but I knew it wouldn’t be good. Dad was two feet from the TV controls and oblivious to my signals to pull the plug on the doctor without calling attention as to why. When she holds up a package of vaginal contraceptive film (I guess it’s like those Listerine breath film things only...........well, whatever) I am forced to lunge across the room and screech, “get rid of it.” We only saw the first half of the ad. Eddie was so busy spinning that if Dr. Elders had told him, by name, to get a shovel and go out to find the treasure that surely must be buried in his backyard, he most likely wouldn’t have noticed. I don’t know about Chuck. But he did notice my odd outburst.

Since I can’t remove the TV from my home (pater is not the least of the addicts), I have had to simply explain to my husband that if he sees Dr. Joycelyn Elders appear on the screen, the channel is to be changed immediately. Don’t wait to see what she pulls out of her bag of tricks.
Her mission never is about rickets, Lyme disease, or bicycle safety. It’s always nasty. And she is trying to sneak up on us when we least expect it.