Why I'm boycotting TV talk shows

The genre of talk shows that dominates daytime television isn't known for being very substantive, but a lot of it is downright shameful.

My biggest beef with the format? (Yeah, I know: "What's your beef?! What's your beef?!") In this decade, one of the main themes of these shows has been placing unruly kids in "tough love" boot camps to "teach them a lesson." All of these episodes are pretty much the same, and anyone could see that the parents of these kids who appeared on the shows had shitty parenting skills. (Hey, Microsoft Works recognizes the word 'shitty'! Learn something new every day!)

I don't regularly watch these series, but I've seen them. At some hours of the day, that's all that's on. Lately, now that I've worked harder to get abusive behavior modification facilities shut down, I've had to recall the "tough love" shows of several years ago. Turns out the facilities in these shows are usually the same type I've been trying to have closed lately. Maybe they're not exactly like the one I've picketed, but they typically fit under the same category of abusive youth confinement centers.

I don't know exactly what's behind the "tough love" episodes, but they all seemed the same in every TV series. Because only a handful of production houses and distributors are behind countless series, I wonder if some of these corporations have ties to some of the facilities themselves. I'm sure that in a lot of cases they do.

Granted, TV talk shows do have a few bright spots. In 2005, 'The Montel Williams Show' featured a devastating segment on Straight, Inc., an abusive "tough love" rehab program that had Republican links. Straight, Inc. had closed down in 1993 because of lawsuits and official investigations, but its "education" arm continues as the Drug Free America Foundation. The show exposed Straight, Inc. so vividly that some credited it with founder Mel Sembler - who was Bush's ambassador to Italy - resigning from his ambassador post.

However, despite 'The Montel Williams Show' being the source of a scathing installment about Straight, Inc., a recent episode featured Williams offering to enroll a teenager in what was described as a residential program for troubled kids. TV really has declined in just 3 years, hasn't it? We should all be wary when we hear about residential youth facilities, based on the generally predatory and abusive track record of "the industry."

One thing I can do to combat this is to just avoid watching television talk shows. This won't be hard to do, because I no longer have hardly any free time to watch teevee anyway. But we have to find ways to end the teen torture racket's abuse. To accomplish this, I'm willing to make conscientious buying decisions whenever possible.

(Source: http://www.thestraights.com/articles2005/montel-1-18-05.htm)