On the perils of watching too much television

The virus is still having its way with me, which is not what I would call fun and leaves me not a little bit cranky. So JD wasn't exactly surprised to find me yelling on Thursday night, but was a bit surprised to find that I was yelling at the TV. I crawled upstairs in time to catch the tail end of Countdown with Keith Olberman-- normally the one and only TV news program I watch, and then, stupidly, left the TV on. Over the next hour I mostly read blogs but I did, once in a while, tune in to what the talking heads on TV were saying. The program that follows Keith is called Verdict with Dan Abrams.

The bits I caught weren't bad, until they got to their second to last segment, on the transgender man who is currently more than 6 months pregnant. I could now tell you all the things that were wrong with it, from the sophomoric reaction of the host to saying in a teaser that the couple talks about being discriminated against by a number of doctors, but choosing to, in the body of the segment, to play clips of their Oprah interview that have to do with the mechanics of home insemination and focusing their commentary on the ewwww factor. But if I did that, this would be one looooooooong post. So instead I tell you that it was bad enough to cause me to shoot off the following email to the show (and I never ever do things like that).

I was extremely disappointed with yesterday's segment on the pregnant man. The host declared that he didn't know where to begin with this story. How about "a man and a woman marry and want to start a family. Unfortunately, due to prior medical condition, the woman had a hysterectomy some years ago. Luckily, the man happened to have the necessary biological machinery to conceive and carry their child."?

Much, much worse were your so-called experts, one of whom declared and the other agreed that "the real father is missing." Under what rock did you find these "experts"? Millions of couples in the United States and all over the world facing the diagnosis of the male factor infertility have turned to donor insemination as a means to build their families. Would your experts tell these couples that the "real father" is missing in their families as well? Would they tell children conceived with the help of donor egg that the woman who gets them dressed and fed every day is not their "real mother?"

Your whole segment was sensationalist and unworthy. This family, as any other family, deserves dignity. Instead of turning their story into the circus that you did, you could've focused on the unfortunate treatment they received from many members of the medical profession. You could've tried to educate. Instead you chose to gawk.

What do you want to bet they won't read this one on the air?