Considering the fact that I am in the hospital and there is not much to do, I have to turn to television to keep me company. In doing so, I have made quite the discovery. I realized that the dirty laundry of the world won’t be found in the world’s Laundromats – but on the world’s talk shows.

In the beginning of the talk show era of television, people would go on to these shows to try and get help for certain issues in their lives. Hosts would listen with concern as guests would tell the host, the audience – and the world that they want to find their missing relative whom they haven’t seen in years. Or, that they want to grant their terminally-ill child their greatest wish – today – it’s a whole new world.

On the talk shows of today, hosts will listen with antagonistic glee as a woman will surprise her boyfriend by telling him she has had a lesbian relationship with his sister to the delight of the studio audience. Or, a man will be forced to take a paternity test along with three other men because the girl he once dated does not know which of her boyfriends is the father of her young child – what has this world come to?

Today’s era of talk shows have evolved from a place to seek help to a Coney Island circus sideshow. From “I Want To Marry My Mother” to “I Have Seven Wives” to “Out Of Control Teens”, the talk show has gone from a medium to help the helpless to a stage to flaunt the ridiculous.

Don’t get me wrong, I watch them and laugh too, but sometimes they just go way too over the top. It’s no secret that we are a society that gets off on other people’s problems and we seem to be in the middle of the “Air My Dirty Laundry On TV” generation. The generation of people that won’t tell their deepest darkest secrets to those it concerns in private – but would rather let them know in front of a room of total strangers and cameras that broadcast to the entire world.

My biggest concerns when it comes to these shows are the ones that involve young children. Imagine if you will the child that is at the center of, “Who Is The Father Of My Baby – DNA Tests Revealed” on let’s say The Maury Povich Show. What if he stumbles upon a tape of the show on his 18th birthday and finds out that his mom had sex with three different men in the same week, got pregnant and had no idea which one was the father of her child. How do you think that child will feel watching that tape? Or what about the parent that is watching, “I Want To Be A Porn Star” on The Jerry Springer Show and sees his little girl sitting on the stage topless telling the world that she wants to have sex on film for money, and when an audience member asks what her parents think, she replies, “They don’t know.” – well, they do now.

Even The People’s Court has joined in the fray. What used to be nothing but a televised courtroom with a real judge has turned into a coliseum type arena with a lunchtime crowd jury and an internet poll during the broadcast. Does anyone else see this as wrong?

I am not saying that the networks should cancel all of their talk shows, just perhaps leave the dirty laundry where it belongs and provide the help that they once did to the people that needed it the most. Isn’t that better than being remembered for airing, “Transsexual Lesbian Affairs?”