Shame on You Joel McHale! Snarky Host of “The Soup” Crosses the Line
It’s amazing what funny, fascinating, pointless, enlightening, and enraging information you can glean off of about 45 minutes of the “E! Channel”. Since I don’t have 400 channels in my home I widen my viewing borders in the workout room. Yes, if no one else has already picked pro wrestling or some news network, I turn it to the “E! Channel” in hopes of catching a “True Hollywood Story”. Sometimes though I’m too late for such viewing pleasure and find myself under the wiles of Ryan Seacrest reporting all the entertainment news of the day and every once in awhile a short clip of “The Soup” hosted by the sometimes hilarious Joel McHale. Yes, a clip of “The Soup” is what I was so privy to yesterday that enraged me and made me wonder how much these hosts get paid to cross the line.
Of course I cannot find the direct quote he said as I’ve googled and searched “You Tube” endlessly trying to get the exact wordage but after a day or so of no such luck I decided I didn’t need a direct quote to get my point across. As the little clip rolled in front of my eyes it was a short little ditty about how “The Today Show” will now be 4 hours long starting in September. This of course brought Joel to his personal enlightenment about how they would fill that 4th hour. First it was something about Ann Curry, I have no recollection of what he said so it must not have been too funny, fascinating, enlightening, or enraging but rather fell under the pointless category. Then he poked that Al Roker might do some pie eating which made me remember that Al had lost all that weight due to gastric bypass surgery. That at least had me remembering. Finally he poked fun at Katie Couric doing something or other with the colon. I know I don’t have a direct quote but even after that little summary you know what I’m getting at. Joel McHale, you crossed the line. Enraged was my emotion as I saw the giddy picture of Katie Couric idiotically placed on the screen tied into the topic of the colon. Joel, do you not know like the rest of us informed Americans that her precious, beloved, dear husband DIED of colon cancer and she has been a champion of colonoscopy’s ever since for early detection of colon cancer? Well of course you did you snarky host. You supposedly know everything about entertainment. I don’t even know if Joel writes his own material but whoever it was crossed the incredibly obvious gray line of inappropriate, rude, heartless, and just plain stupid.
Where has the heart gone? Let’s just think about this for a minute. Wait! That is one of the problems today with entertainment reporting. People do not think about the other person, they just want to get the juiciest gossip and press the envelope of the inappropriate. Did any of these producers even consider what it is like to lose somebody you love to cancer? Think about it. What if it was your husband, wife, brother, sister, mother, or father? The devastation of watching your loved one deteriorate and finally die of a disease that ravaged their body and ate away at their families is life altering to say the least. You don’t poke fun at people’s devastating losses!!! Well, if you did think of all of this then shame on you producers. My guess is that you didn’t though because the trend of late is to ring everyone through the grind-you-into-nothing-and exploit-you-anyway-we-can machine so of course you let hit-below-the-belt host Joel McHale make such an infuriating comment. It’s not about the people you are “reporting” on, it’s about how many viewers you can get or how many magazines you can sell.
Sadly Joel McHale made his comments with a silly grin upon his lips only sealing into my mind the fact that he has no ability to think for himself regarding the welfare of others. Instead he blindly regurgitates what he is told on the teleprompter and then skips with a hiccupping bounce to the bank to cash in his check. And who pays the price for his check? Women like Katie Couric who dared to go public with their grief and turned their loss into a way to help others by championing early detection of colon cancer. Shame on you Joel McHale! Shame on you.
© Copyright 2007 Blindigo Magazine | Article written by Niki Tschirgi
