We need to sit down and discuss things… as a country. We need to get the farthest, left-leaning socialist, and face them off with the farthest, right-leaning conservative, and everyone in between those two extremes… and get them to talk and listen to each other. No yelling. No name calling. No logical fallacies allowed for anyone.
If there were a television show that did this, I think it could become the most popular show of all time. Bring in special guests. Bring in people off the street. Bring in everyone from every walk of life and/or financial level. Give them all a basic lesson on how to argue, and how to listen. Set up the stage as a comfortable living room, full of warmth and coziness. Make it to where there are sensors on every microphone, so that if anyone’s voice goes over a certain decibel, the mic gets cut off. Allow for cool-down periods.
I’d also like to see a host that can stay calm under pressure and/or be able to represent many viewpoints at the same time. Either someone that most people are generally drawn to, or someone that’s so unequivocally unimpressive that they kind of blend into the background. You could even mix up the hosts every episode, just so that the people watching are consistently getting different viewpoints not only from the guests, but the hosts.
The topics need to range from the biggest things we’re going through as a country, to the most innocuous. One week, it’s about health care, the next, whether or not you should load your toilet paper to be pulled over or under. We need the serious to be tempered with the humorous. Everything from drugs to fidget spinners.
What would be the point of all this, you ask? (well, I’m pretty sure you didn’t, but just go with it) Not only seeing different people with different viewpoints discussing different issues, but without a goal of trying to prove anything. At no time is anyone allowed to say anything like, “I’m right.”, or “This is how you’re supposed to think.” or anything along the lines of that. This show will be mainly used to inform and allow the viewers to reflect on the things they’ve seen or heard. If someone lies on the show during the discussion, there’s a pop-up on screen to inform the viewers of the misinformation. If someone states a fact, there’s also a corresponding agreement posted with it.
At the end of the show, there could be a cool graph, or series of graphics, that displayed the range of possibilities for the topic discussed on that show. If the purpose is to inform, then having that be the last thing people see would reinforce that. Having a public forum to respond to shows would also allow others to provide input after the information has been presented.
Do I think a show like this would be popular? Hell yeah! We would get to see Americans discussing everything under the sun as equals. The most uninformed could express themselves right along with the most intelligent (and possibly still uninformed). We would get to see the melting pot that is America. All races, all abilities, all levels of education, and the richest down to the poorest and all of their respective opinions and thoughts and beliefs.
Do I think a show like this will ever be made? No. It takes money to make a show like this. People who spend money on television shows like polarizing ideas. They want something dramatic and exciting that’ll bring in sponsors. We want drama and ‘reality’ TV (read, scripted within an inch of its life). We want COPS, so we can see people that have it worse than us, not that underneath it all, we’re all humans that want love and respect and dignity. We want vampires and werewolves and space and fantasy.
If anyone, beyond the half a dozen people that visit this site, reads this and has any kind of clout with a television network, show them this… pass it on… share it with everyone you know. Who knows? Maybe there’s the slightest chance of a snowball in hell that something like this could be made.
What do you think of this idea? Sheer fantasy, or absolute genius? (I promise my head won’t get too big) Let me know in the comments.
See you tomorrow.
In the first paragraph, I thought maybe I could come up with a handful of shows that already try to do this. But really, the rest of the suggestion becomes something very, very specific – though pretty great, too. One show that I was thinking of is “Q&A” ( http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/ ), but there’s a whole bunch of shows on the Australian Broadcasting Network that try to get people with different opinions to have rational discussions with each other, and try to include the general public as well. Last time I was in the country I caught a really engaging episode of a show called “You Can’t Ask That” ( http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/you-cant-ask-that/LE1617H010S00 ). Most of the actual shows will be region locked (much to my eternal dismay), but it captures a lot of what I find to be missing on the TV I watch now (in Canada, which by and large seems to be predominantly sourced from the States). I’ll be interested if anyone else happens to comment with other shows – ones maybe more accessible to this side of the Pacific. And obviously even more interested if someone runs with your idea some day…..
Sigh, I managed to get the name wrong – ABC, as in Australian Broadcasting Corporation.