What is poor Maury Povich to do with himself? The mainstay, his life's blood has been removed from his hands and made available to the common man. No longer will the masses have to come crawling and throw themselves upon the court of public ridicule in seeking answers. Nope. The answer is as simple as wandering into your nearest drugstore.
So, just what is it that has the writers of the Maury show having to seek new topic ideas? This morning I was flipping through a magazine when I saw an advertisement for a home DNA testing kit. No, it's not a CSI kit to help you figure out if OJ did it or not. It's a paternity testing kit.
My mind instantly rattled off a long list of questions. Right off---what's the etiquette behind this? I doubt Emily Post had to deal with it. How does one go about rounding up the usual suspects? Would they advize that one make sure that firearms and alcohol are not involved?
I also suspect that this product is probably not running its ad in every magazine out there. I bet they have a target audience and it isn't the people who read "The New Yorker" or "Martha Stewart". Which of course leaves them open to accusations of stereotyping and profiling as John Edwards did have that love child in the very same manner as that grammatically challenged girl that used to run screaming off of Maury's stage when the negative results came in.
I also have to wonder what happened to shame. I guess I have to blame reality television but we seem to have confused fame with infamy. As long as our names are out there for fifteen minutes, we don't really care what the context is. Then there's the trickle down effect and what began with some slag flashing her breasts on Big Brother ends with teens posting risque photos on their Facebook page. I remember when I was in highschool. I hoped I wouldn't bump into anybody if I had to buy a box of Kotex. How do you buy a Paternity Testing Kit, especially in a small town, without everybody kknowing about it? The town cryer would find it difficult not to start a betting pool as to actual lineage. I bet the kids would be teased mercilessly in about five minutes (as that's how fast it would take for the word to get around).
I also wonder how many of these kits will be bought by the paranoid nutbar types who think their wife is cheating merely because she is being kind to the elderly 80 year old next door. Given that lab mistakes do happen, I can forsee Mr Psycho killing his wife.
Better living through chemistry? There already seems to be enough problems with reading something as simple as a home pregnancy kit. Besides, it's kind of fun trying to figure out just whether or not that eighth guy tested might be the one. I'll leave it up to Maury. Besides, how else will those people get their free, overnight stay at the Holiday Inn in Chicago?
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