IDYD ch 2: It Came from the Television

"I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional" by Wendy Kaminer.  Let's review what the book has said so far.
"Everyone in the whole world is a huge whiner."

OK, that about brings us up to now...

In all seriousness, I think perhaps the biggest problem with this book is that it is a massively majority opinion that has mistaken itself for a minuscule minority one, a self-proclaimed lone voice of reason in an insane asylum, if you will.  The author portrays the world as largely populated with people who claim either abuse resembling the Holocaust because their parents didn't help them with homework one night or proudly proclaim that they are victims of an addiction to... whatever.  The most trivial of items will work.  These people insist on talking about their addiction or hardships incessantly to anyone who will listen, much like some half-crazy guy on the subway, while simultaneously refusing to listen to anyone else.  And above all, any addiction or claim to past trauma is a immediate, compete and irrevocable "get out of responsibility free" card.

Pfph.

This is not the case now.  This was not the case in 1992, when the book was written.  It was not the case before.  There is still massive stigma against therapy.  Just the phrase "my therapist" is an immediate conversation stopper in most company.  Look around your workplace.  Has anyone there come up and told you while on the clock that they're have a drug or alcohol addiction?  Statistically speaking, 6% of them do.  If they inadvertently advertise it, do the people around them go "oh, it's not their fault. They have an addiction," or do they go "Lousy drunk/pothead/druggie/OK-I'm-not-exactly-up-on-my-slang-here.  Why doesn't he get his act together?  They ought to fire the bum."  If anything, trying to claim addiction or a hard past as an excuse for your actions will get you smacked down twice as hard -- one for the act, and again for trying to talk yourself out of the consequences of it.

I'm not saying either is the way it "should" be.  I'm saying her personal little codependent nightmare world where the "recovery movement" has destroyed America complete with Mom and apple pie has never existed anywhere except in fear-mongering media portrayals and maybe some really bad sitcoms.

Bad sitcoms are not how the Recovery Monster will come through your TV to get you, however, and that brings us to Chapter 2 in the book: "Testifying: Television".

I'm trying to figure out the punctuation there.  It's not like other chapters are "Testifying: Radio" and "Testifying: Semaphore Flags".  Colons are always kind of tricky as punctuation goes, so maybe I'm in the wrong here, but that just doesn't look right.

Here the author goes on (and on and on) about about how the Recovery Monster's soul-baring, spilling-every-thought-in-their-head (especially the ones she doesn't want to hear.  "Stop talking about child abuse!  We need to focus on real issues!") minions "dominate the mass marketplace and help make it one that is inimical to ideas", and they have laid waste to intelligent discourse by utterly infiltrating... talk shows.

::blinkblink::

Right, because everyone emulates the guests on Jerry Springer.

I didn't know my eyes could roll 360 degrees.  They're talk shows!  Worse, with this book's publication date, they're 80s talk shows.  I am old enough to run for Senate, and there has never been a time in my life when talk shows have not been considered trash television.  If anything, talk shows trigger a strong knee-jerk anti reaction.  Anything featured on a talk show has to be bad, anything someone does on a talk show is a sign of a trashy loser.

So, the rest of the chapter, do we go off this to talk about how the Recovery Monster has spread from talk shows to say, popular entertainment?  Or worse, the nightly news?
Well, no.  Talking about the news would mean admitting that everyone in the media exactly the same things she was saying, going to popular entertainment would mean facing that "the recovery movement" is a huge laughing stock.  So we stick to talk shows, and how the Recovery Monster has turned them to a force of evil instead of their previous force for... evil. Hmm.

That's enough for one day.  Next time: "Est.  It's not just a suffix anymore."  (What the hell is 'est'?)