Kid Nation

I'm reluctant to even mention CBS's vile new reality show Kid Nation for fear of accidentally making someone aware of it who was blissfully unaware, but look over here:

This is a column by Maureen Ryan, a TV critic at The Chicago Tribune, talking about the reprehensible show. She's eloquent, focused and dead on target. Never once does she call Kid Nation a pus-soaked wart on the ass of modern society. Or point out that making this show is a good sign of just how soulless the producers and executives of Kid Nation are. Or suggest that every single parent who was stupid and cruel enough to sign their kid up for this televised Darwinian experiment should be lined up against a wall and shot and their kids given over to someone who might have an interest in raising them instead of using them to git on the teevee.

In response to this strong-worded but restrained piece, there's a discussion that ensues wherein people present all kinds of strawmen argument about Boy Scout camp and kids being coddled and how "we haven't seen the show yet." It's not uncommon when reading the Internet to want to reach in and throttle some clueless commenter, but I have rarely seen it so frequent as in that thread, where every intelligent or even just sane voice is shouted down by two or three yahoos with a half-assed stupid opinion about not coddling kids by making sure that they don't drink bleach or light themselves on fire.

The parents who put their kids up for this show failed on the most basic level they could, and should really go out and kill themselves now. Really, it's for the good of our collective intelligence.