Money Talks

From high atop the mound we call showbiz comes the very jumbled perspectives of those who we revere primarily for their value as entertainers. Why should we be shocked by anything that someone on TV says? Would anyone watch if the same boring platitudes were spilled, day after day, without a wink in the direction of controversy?
Can we blame Jerry Lewis for using the "F" word - no, not that one, the one that is a derogatory term for homosexual - in the eighteenth hour of his annual Muscular Dystrophy Telethon? The man is eighty-one years old, and he has been babbling away for forty-two years every Labor Day to encourage us all to donate money to find a cure for his kids. He was quick to apologize: "I apologize to anyone who was offended. I obviously made a poor choice of words. Everyone who knows me understands that I hold no prejudices in this regard. In the family atmosphere of the telethon, I forget that not everyone knows me that well."
That's a pretty safe bet, apologizing to "anyone who was offended." Everyone who wasn't offended apparently doesn't need an apology. As far as the "family atmosphere" of his telethon, it makes me wonder what a Sunday dinner is like at the Lewis house. "Hey, c'mon in you f-" Well, you get the idea.
Speaking of family, over on the View, new host Whoopi Goldberg suggested that we shouldn't rush to judgement where Michael Vick is concerned. She said, "from where he comes from" in the South, dogfighting isn't that unusual. "It's like cockfighting in Puerto Rico. There are certain things that are indicative to certain parts of the country." I didn't see the show myself, but I suspect that she may have gone on to apologize for Ed Gein, since "folks from Wisconsin are just a little kooky like that."
It reminds me that there really are no people like show people. And maybe that's best.