While most of the world was watching the Winter Olympics last night, low-rise apartment buildings and RVs everywhere were awash with the comforting glow of another televised sporting event -- the Glutton Bowl, featuring such astounding feats of athleticism as consuming bowls of mayonnaise and whole sticks of butter.
Ah, Fox. Ever since they stopped airing World’s Wackiest Police Chases and Civil Rights Violations on a weekly basis, I was starting to wonder if they had gone soft. I mean, it’s been at least a full calendar year since we’ve been treated to a prime-time animal mauling. But apparently the subtle shift is part of a broadcast strategy that involves devoting TV shows to each of the seven deadly sins. We’ve had lust (Temptation Island), greed (Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionare), sloth (well... just about anything in Fox’s prime-time lineup), and now gluttony. What’s next -- Who Wants to Covet Thy Neighbor’s Mule?
To paraphrase our Right-Thinking president, no wonder I think they’re evil.
But that’s not the scary part -- Fox, after all, will be Fox, and I love them for it. The scary part is that this eating contest is actually sanctioned, by an organization called the International Federation of Competitive Eating, which we can safely assume is kind of like the IOC, only with less biased judges.
Not that figure skating is much more uptown in the grand scheme of things -- remember Right-Thinking athlete and all-around sophisticate Tonya Harding? (Perhaps you’ve seen her mentioned in the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town.) Luckily, NBC opted to wait to air skating until after the Glutton Bowl chugged to its sickening denouement, undoubtedly sparing countless fights over the remote control in trailer parks across the greater Southeast.