An Emanation of Vacuity: (boobs on the book tube?)

by Daniel Richler

[On the screen behind Mr. Richler appears an infomercial for Nair Hair Removal Gel]

Well, people, that was what greeted me as I turned on our brand-new channel last fall. Mortified, I fired off an e-mail to my bosses:

I turned on BookTelevision this morning, expecting to see Writers’ Profiles with – as is promised in the TV guides – George Orwell. What I saw was a woman removing swathes of hair from the back of a freakishly hirsute man with some miracle solvent. She did this repeatedly, turning a facecloth over in her hand to display the resulting dark and glutinous wad to the camera. Now that that disgusting monster midway exhibition is over, I’m watching a sequence of smiling fitness gargoyles demonstrate the wonders of the latest phony plastic exercise gizmo to end up featured on suburban lawn sales across the land next spring. Now, I know that writers are not always pretty or fit – John Irving is an interesting exception, being a hairy wrestler and a sexy beast – but this material was an offense to my eyes. Elsewhere on the schedule we put up a Viewer Discretion Advised warning at the drop of a hat, but nothing to prepare us for this. How do we reconcile the seriousness of our mission with the tasteless cheez of these infomercials? How much cash do these things earn us? Have you any idea what the press would do to us if they saw them? I can tolerate these embarrassments after midnight – under duress. But at 10:00am on Monday morning? The only saving grace as far as I see it is that we’re lucky no one’s watching.