Every morning I usually start my day by eating my oatmeal with assorted fruit for breakfast and watching the previous evenings The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. And this morning was no different. But because The Daily Show is recorded, when it is over I erase it from the DVR (poor man’s TiVo) and the cable box jumps to random live television. This particular morning the cable box jumped smack dab into the middle of a riveting episode of Family Feud.
It’s been a while since I watched The Feud. Last I watched it, it still had it’s hillbilly overtones, Richard Dawson had not moved on to hosting The Running Man yet and the logo looked like this.
Back then typical surveys were simple things like “top 5 answers on the board; we surveyed 100 people and asked them ‘Name something you do at school.'” Pretty simple and mundane stuff really.
Well let me tell you, Sonny Jim, things have changed on The Feud. I only watched for two questions. But it seems the subjects that common people are adept at being surveyed about have changed. The two surveys I saw were (and I assure you this is not my usual made-up or embellished fodder):
1. Name something you shoplift from the supermarket.
…and…
2. Name something you do to sober up quickly.
And it wasn’t that these were the surveys they used that disturbed me most. What really disturbed me was that the families got all the answers! It seems they are all quite skilled at drinking and theft. (And just for the record, the #5 answer for the “sober up” question was “have another drink.”)
Serenity now!