ANIMAL PLANET TURNS PC
by Frederick B. Meekins. [January
4, 2004]
[HollywoodInvestigator.com]
This should come as no surprise, but Kelly Diedring won
the prize on Animal Planet's King
of the Jungle of having one's own special on that network.
My loyal readers
will recall her as the ditzy blonde mentioned in Ecovangelism:
Is Animal Planet the Next PTL? who confirmed it really is better to
remain silent and thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all
doubt when she blurted to the effect she did not think herself superior
to any animal.
It is obvious
Kelly did not win this competition based upon extensive knowledge of the
animal world or because of her amicable personality. Rather, she
was simply the best at spouting the clichéd environmental party
line. Why should intelligence or charm be allowed to get in the way
of such a thing?
This was evident
in the final competition between Adam and Kelly. Adam's presentation
concentrated on the biological characteristics and natural context of the
tigers being interpreted. Kelly, on the other had, veered off topic
considerably into her hackneyed spiel about the evils of development and
so forth, rambling on about how children of the future have every right
to experience tigers in the wild. One would think children living
in an area where they might bump into a tiger would just be grateful no
longer having to fear becoming cat food.
Kelly's documentary
debut was as uninspired since her program focused on the Nile crocodile.
Doesn't this network suffer from a dearth of reptile coverage; after all,
isn't one of the channel's headliners known as The
Croc Hunter?
Why not a nice show about birds? Seems they hardly have any shows anymore about animals worthy of our admiration,
only about those needing to be chopped up by a garden hoe or run over by
a lawnmower.
But if nothing else, maybe her
trek out into the filth and muck of the African wilderness disimbued her
of the silliness that the natural world is fuzzy, cuddly, and well-mannered. Hard to think of no creature being superior to any other when you see one
rip another to shreds for lunch.
In justifying his embarrassing
display of infatuation towards all things Kelly throughout the entire competition,
Nigel Marvin claimed that the final decision of the judges came down to
a matter of "intangibles" since the two finalists had been otherwise evenly
matched. I suppose Adam's just weren't as big as Kelly's.
Copyright 2004 by Frederick B.
Meekins, American WorldView
Dispatch.
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