What is with this obsession with showing surgery on TV? It’s not enough that the medical and forensic dramas that dominate the schedule regularly feature gory make-up and effects to simulate it, the news has to top them with real footage of actual surgery and other medical procedures – at dinner time.
How many times have I watched the news while eating my dinner – my version of time saving multi-tasking – only to be confronted with an image of someone’s heart or other organ being worked on? Then there’s the various solutions to obesity they like to show, like liposuction. There’s nothing like watching human fat being sucked through a tube to make you savour that meal.
But, I don’t think there’s anything that can make you feel sick to your stomach like an inside view of a colonoscopy. I do not want to see the inside of anyone’s ass or intestines at any time, let alone when I’m eating. That glistening surface of some pinch point that appears to be the gateway to the next chamber of someone’s innermost privacy is forever burned in my mind.
It’s bad enough that broadcasters would show this stuff on the late news, leaving you with the lasting image to haunt you as you try to sleep. But, they couldn’t stop there. They had to put it on the evening news, too, when many people are eating. It’s just tasteless and inconsiderate of their audience. Even if I wasn’t eating, I wouldn’t want to see it.
Shocking images are considered good television, I suppose. If the alternative is talking heads, they’d rather put you off your dinner than risk boring you into watching the competition. The competition is showing it, so they have to. Their ratings are more important than your enjoyment of a meal.