We've all seen it. The silly woman interrupting our regularly scheduled television programming with a commercial begging for donations to some starving or dying group of children in a research hospital or a plague-ridden continent. Personalities like Mary Tyler Moore or Alyssa Milano or Sarah McLachlan and her ridiculously abused animals. They sit in front of a red background and in a heartfelt, yet demanding, voice, go on and on about how these little cancer victims or starving Africans or neglected canines need your donations so badly that they will die within the hour lest they receive your money to feed or medicate or arrange an adoption for them. There are even commercials begging for donations for facially deformed children who desperately need plastic surgery. How about you don't display those hideous children on my television? I was just laughing at Betty White's latest joke on "The Golden Girls", feeling so happy and lighthearted, when I am then affronted with a picture of a fugly child needing plastic surgery. See what you awful women have done? You have gone from champions of the weak and helpless to ultimate buzzkill. That's not cool. And sorry! I don't have any money to donate. If I were more well off, I would be donating to charitable causes. But right now I'm stuck being broke and in a fix trying to drown out my miseries via a cheerful situational comedy from the 1980s. So stop making me feel bad about myself because I cannot help your god-forsaken starving, cancer-stricken, deformed, abused African children. I can't stand it when you do that to me! Why are you doing this to me? Stop doing this to me!!! I just wanted to watch Bea Arthur and Estelle Getty make catty jokes at each other's expenses. Is that to much to ask? You people are more evil than the animal abusers and dictators condemning the Africans to starve! I hate you!!!
Ahem. I digress. That was an example of Pathos in the real world, in addition to a very normal reaction to it. Have a pleasant evening!
I feel with the millions that they have, they can provide for these children or abused animals.
ReplyDelete