Everything has its price. Scary isn't it? Surely there is something sacred, something so personally valuable to you that you wouldn't part with it for any amount of money. Surely there is something you'd never sell - regardless of the offer.
Give the experts at HGTV about ten minutes and someone will try and convince you that purchasing a home for investments sake is more important than buying a place to call home. We're encouraged to consider the idea of profits before we think about the memories or the comfort, usefulness or practicality of a family home. Seeing the place through the eyes of a potential buyer from the future is more important than picturing the kids playing in the yard or the family gathered around the table or yourself warming by the fireplace. According to the TV experts you should always consider the worth of a place to someone you've never met before personal value.
Want to see American greed on display in frustrating fashion? Watch a TV reality show. In a few minutes you'll likely catch a few fine examples. Donald Trump is offering boardroom jobs. Harry Mandel is giving away briefcases filled with loot. Eat a few bites of raw and rotten animal parts and you may get sick, but you'll recover to wealth and instant celebrity. You can cut a stranger's throat, rat out a friend, sleep with someone else's partner, dangle from a piece of yarn over a flaming pool of piranha infested acid and if you survive you'll probably be exhausted and scarred but at least you'll be wealthy. Your dignity and friends will be gone, but who needs either when you can live well? What's not for sale?
I'll admit that I do get into some reality TV. I don't usually watch the folks who play with the alligators or eat the raw giraffe privates. I got tired of watching the billionaire from the city argue with the already employed and successful job seekers. I do get a kick out of watching Howie's gorgeous models open the shiny cases though. It's a study in desire I think, and not just the pretty ladies.
Watching excited contestants who'd normally be thrilled beyond measure to be handed a couple a hundred thousand dollars gamble it away for the risky chance to walk away with a million can sadly be entertaining.
Tonight I saw TV greed at its worst. A young lady just admitted to a total stranger game show host and millions of Americans that she's got dirt on her dad that her mother knows nothing about. Spilling the beans earned her about ten thousand dollars. I don't advocate keeping dangerous secrets, but making Mom and Dad a commodity seems cheap to me. And that wasn't the worst of it. The overly bleached blond sat in the hot seat while the man in the suit asked her question after question that revealed her innermost thoughts and desires - all for a price. Without exception, every-single-question dug a hole so incrementally deep that her young husband of two years buried his head in his hands in disbelief. She admitted to all of us that she was secretly in love with a former boyfriend when she married her husband. Ka-ching! She confessed she'd leave her husband for a chance to get the old bf back. Ka-ching! She'd been having sex with other people since she got married. Ka-ching!
The network was paying this woman well for her wide open honesty, and she didn't seem to mind who was injured in the process. She was racking up the dollars while her family, and even the show's host sat in shocked amazement. But she was getting wealthy, and that's obviously what mattered most. She sold out her parents,her husband and her integrity. To her everything really does have its price.
In the end she lost the game and the money. We're left wondering what else she lost.
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