If you want to see an ugly side of society look no further than television in the morning. First, watch the news and observe the worst people can do to each other.

Then, hang around for the plethora of “talk shows” featuring vicious family brawls masquerading as entertainment, or worse, therapeutic resolution and/or closure.

It’s all bullshit. It’s not therapeutic resolution, it’s not closure (God I hate that useless word), and it sure isn’t the talk show host providing an outlet for family and friends to air out their differences whereby the family will then come together and sing kumbaya.

Daytime TV, especially of the talk show persuasion, is Hate TV. The entire foundation relies on conflict and the louder the conflict the better.

If you ain’t screamin’, you ain’t tryin’.

It’s the rare time that I find myself stuck in front of Hate TV, as I work during the day. But if I’m off from work and going to the laundromat, I’m guaranteed to see Hate TV blaring at the establishment.

Laudromats and Jerry Springer were a match made in heaven.

People cleaning their clothes love to dirty their souls.

For years, while at the laundromat, and this is true of places I’ve used in Connecticut, New York, and Florida, I’ve noticed people love watching Hate TV while washing and folding. You can watch their eyes open wide as each new family skeleton gets paraded out to the studio audience. Sometimes the yelling in the laundromat drowns out the studio audience screaming in fake horror.

It’s fake horror because every person sitting in the audience came expressly to watch Hate TV. They want to see sister fight sister because one of them slept with the other one’s man. They want to see the DNA test that proves the man is a deadbeat dad or that the mother is a whore for not knowing who the real father is.

The camera shows the audience admonishing and judging. You can feel the stage director just out of camera range whipping them into a frenzy and the participants on stage play their parts to further the audience blood lust into an orgy of vile eagerness and the desire to see more family combat on stage.

Most of the particpants have been egged on by the hosts on stage and/or the producers back stage before the filming began. It’s orchestrated Hate TV. I’m sure some of the venom is real, but you have to ask yourself what kind of human being would open a vein on national TV and expose their deepest, darkest secrets.

How troubled are the people we are watching on Daytime Hate TV that the participants would be so willing to allow the world into a place the world has no business being allowed into.

No one watching at home is being helped with the knowledge of the DNA results of complete strangers. No good can come of knowing if the man slept with both sisters or not. It’s titillation and nothing more.

I’ve often wondered why the people at the laundromat and those sitting on their couches love Hate TV so much. My theory now is that by watching people shred each other the viewer can justify their own lives aren’t so messed up after all.

See the people screaming on the television, rushing at each other as stagehands pull them apart. Bleeps filling the air as faces turn red in rage.

My life isn’t like that. It might not be perfect, but it’s not as bad as their life is.

Justification. At some point we all do it. But there is a real sadness I feel when I see my fellow clothes washers yelling at the television, or talking amongst each other, getting all worked up over people they will never meet. I feel anger that people went out of their way to go to a studio and stand in lines for hours to watch the spectacle.

I seethe over the talk show hosts who pretend they are there to facilitate truth and thereby creating a healing process once the show is over.

The only truth is that people who host Hate TV are paying their mortgages, their kids college tuition, and building their retirement mansions… all on the pain of troubled people being used and manipulated.

And if you’re a regular watcher of Daytime Hate TV…. you’re getting your kicks via those troubled people as well.

That makes you just as guilty as the slimy hosts and their sidekicks… the studio audience.

Share your thoughts with me at jamesbarraford@gmail.com