Idiotic entertainment.

Wipeout is "Human cannonballs! Human pinballs! Crashes, smashes and mud splashes! Twenty-four thrill-seekers will compete in the world's largest extreme obstacle course designed to provide the most spills, face plants and wipeouts ever seen on television, in Wipeout, a painfully funny new reality series premiering TUESDAY, JUNE 24 (8:00-9:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network."

Rot gut. Just what our country needs right now. More Novocaine for the soul.

"Everybody’s got values . . . The thing that frightens me is the way that an eroding public school system . . . and television on all over the place is leading to a steady dumbing down of the American public and a corrosion of basic critical thinking in the population."
-- Jamie Raskin, American University law professor, November 2004 on the Democracy Now! radio program