American Gladiator Will Be the End of Us

Saturday mornings were something special when I was a child. It meant getting up early, not for school, but instead for bowls of cereal and my first true love, television. After getting all hopped up on Captain Crunch (along with suffering massive cuts in my mouth, as any true victim of the Captain's wrath will tell you) the TV would go on. From Duck Tales to Pee Wee's Playhouse and American Gladiator right up to WWF wrestling, these were the glory days of the boob tube. In these couple of hours things happened in my mind that will always be with me. Pee Wee really was my friend and look at how much fun he was! The American Gladiators? I could take them. After all I was only about four and a half feet tall and seventy pounds soaking wet, but it didn't matter. When I looked in the mirror I was all muscle. Those gladiators feared ME.

Well, almost twenty years later here I am sitting on my couch on a Monday night and what do I happen to find amongst my viewing options? American Gladiator. And it's hosted by The Hulk. Yes that Hulk, the Hulkamania Hulk, the whacha gonna do when Hulkamania runs wild on you Hulk. If I weren't sitting I would've fallen over from shock. Could this really be true? Of course it was. After all, everything old is new again these days. Not even my childhood was safe from greedy executives at television stations. I felt violated and cheap, but I watched anyway. And the scary thing is, I enjoyed every second of it. It brought that feeling back, I was ten years old again and imagining myself up against the gladiators. Only now I was a smoker and a little more out of shape. I probably would have had a better shot at them when I was ten. But there I was with clenched fists and an accelerated heart rate, rooting for the contender to kick the crap out of that muscle headed jerk. This was amazing, I was hooked. But then I started to realize all the product plugs. "Brought to you by Toyota." "Thanks in part to Dodge." In my old age I've become extremely cynical with advertising and the whole corporate sponsorship crap. This was ruining my experience and I didn't like it. For just one second I wished I could just forget all that stuff and enjoy something, without looking too deep into it. Was this going on when I was a kid too but I just didn't realize it?

A comedian named Bill Hicks, who died a few years ago, said American Gladiator was the reason that we are all going to hell. He said it was the ultimate sign of the dumbing down of America. Obviously he wasn't around long enough to see American Idol but I'm sure he would say the same thing about that freak show. What I'm trying to get at is this. Is ignorance bliss? I read a lot, and the things I read usually have to with how our society is breaking down and the reasons for that decline. Does being aware really do anything? I'm going to be dead in fifty years, will the fact that I realized why America was regressing really mean anything? I'll just die a little unhappier because I couldn't enjoy American Idol or pretty much anything else on TV like the rest of the country. My advice is this; put down the books, grab a big bag of cheetos, watch television and die a happy person. Don't be like me.