Misanthropy in Small Doses

There's this show on TLC or Discovery or Home Surgery Channel or whatever called "Honey, We're Killing the Kids!" Being a supporter of well thought-out homicide in all its myriad guises, I was crestfallen to learn that this show is not actually about airlifting your children to a deserted desert island where you get to hunt them, Most Dangerous Game style. No, what's really happens on the show is that parents who let their kids eat big macs three times a day are given a frightening glimpse of how their children will look when they're forty if they continue down the road to gustatory perdition.

An elfin woman who looks like the kind of person who enjoys holding ding-dongs just out of reach tells them awful things until they cry, and then she sets about making their children eat cous-cous and wheat grass.

I think there are a couple of things that need to be discussed about this program:

one: These kids are horrific hellbeasts who really could benefit from a little killing, pimply little jerks who could be redeemed by the sorts of lessons that only the occasional cold-blooded murder can provide. They curse at their parents, cry when forced to drink milk instead of soda, and generally make a really good argument for sterilization.

two: The commercial for the show features a woman in line at the grocery store. She's complaining because her child won't eat anything but butter and gin. And hey, presto! the kid morphs into the forty-year old version of himself as he will appear if he keeps on eating and not exercising. The mother recoils from this hideous vision, this nightmarish visage before her, flabby and bald. Very effective for scaring parents, I'm sure, but what about the actor who's playing Cautionary Hideous Man in the commercial? How would you like to be that guy, whose very appearance can reform the eating habits of a generation, lest they swell and sweat into just such a shmoo-like atrocity?

I wonder what the audition was like?