June 11, 2007
The Sorry Channel
[Fragment of a pirated copy of a pitch from a major cable network to a number of advertisers. We can't tell you which advertising company this came from. And by the way, this is all copyrighted --by someone-- so don't rip it off or we'll have to send Louie, and you don't want to meet Louie, y'unnerstan?]
by The Tears Of Things
NoShame Productions, a division of Parent Company Worldwide, proudly announces the debut of The Sorry Channel, coming soon to a cable network near you. With its punchy tagline --"Who's Sorry Now?"-- the Sorry Channel delivers up-to-the-latest-teardrop accounts of public apologies worldwide. And there are plenty --almost two per calendar day:
Paul Slansky, [co-] author [with Arlee Sorkin] of the book "My Bad: 25 Years of Public Apologies and the Appalling Behavior That Inspired Them," said there have been more than 200 public apologies in 2006. He said there were 50 in October alone.
And that's just the apologies, not the refusals to apologize, the demands for apology, and the countdowns to possible apologies which crackle across the social atmosphere every single day. Drawing on the prodigious telecommunications resources of PCW, The Sorry Channel, and its Web counterpart Sorrychannel.com, promise to be the global clearinghouses of contrition.
You can be sure we'll be there before the next teardrop falls.
But that's not all. Let us give you a peek at our flagship show:
· Veteran forensic interviewer Regreta von Cistern hosts the prime-time panel show "Are You Sincere?" Public statements generate lively chat between Regreta and her regular panel of experts:
--Psychologist, healer, and retired okra magnate Oprah Chopra, with her incomparable insights into motivations from revenge to forgiveness;
--Body Language Expert LaTonya Begonia, who has developed two new psychometric measures specifically for the Sorry Channel. One is the Head Tilt Measure, with interpretations for both left and right tilts, as well as, of course, the degree of tilt and the number of seconds the tilt is held. The second innovation is the Swaggart Sincerity Index. Its factorial complexity defeats summary --it includes such variables as duration of eye contact, contraction of jaw muscles, number of tears, volume of voice, duration of inability to speak, and so on-- but it results in a single, simple number, easily explained to the audience.
--Word Maven Bernie Gruntz, author of "Deep Words: Words Are Deep." Gruntz and the panel will tackle such statements as the following:
"It's an instance we would like to put behind us."
--Beverly Rice, general manager of WDEZ in Wausau, WI, apologizing for country music DJ Terry T, who had asked listeners to call in with jokes about the Auschwitz death camp on the fiftieth anniversary of its liberation. Broadcast January 31, 1995.
And these, from actor Isaiah Washington, after his anti-gay remarks:
"Words have power. The power to express love, happiness and joy. They also have the power to heal," Washington says in the message. "When you use words that demean a person because of their sexual orientation, race or gender, you send a message of hate. . . . We have the power to heal and change the world by the words we use."
The panel's first question for the second example might well be, "Does this sound like the way Isaiah Washington --or anyone-- would talk?"
"Are You Sincere?" is just the beginning, though. There's "Still Waiting," in which left and right argue about who should be apologizing to whom, and vice versa; and "Are Words Enough?" which explores creative judgments for verbal offenders, such as sandwich boards, t-shirts, crawling . . .
Are you fascinated yet? We've just begun! Along with LaTonya's psychometry, we've contracted with olfactory researcher Professor Cosmo Nostro (a pseudonym, naturally), author of "Pervasive: The Odor of Mendacity," to surreptitiously collect some samples from political candidates for analysis, after which--
[fragment ends]
Posted by Jerome at June 11, 2007 08:30 PM | TrackBack