Dear Producers of Dancing With The Stars:
Don't get me wrong--I like your show. There's glitz and glitter, beauty and talent, and an abundance (okay, overabundance) of soap-operatic exchanges between "star" and pro partner: rants, whining,
mea culpas, tears and treacle, patting verging on petting, make-up hugs. As the season progresses, there is always esthetically satisfying terpsichorean improvement on the part of the contestants. But the show would be so much
better if you provided a level dancing floor by segregating the competition according to age and ability. Community rec basketball programs have a six-foot -and- under division, and senior softball leagues and tournaments are divided into
age groups and ability levels in order to provide fair competition. As a participant in senior softball, I can attest that a mere five years of age makes a literal game-changing difference in speed, strength, and quickness of reflexes. DWTH,
to the detriment of the show, too often pits the young and the lithe against the old and the lethargic; the athletic against the average or the downright klutzy. In this, your 18th season, you offer us:
Billy Dee Williams, 76, a decrepit
actor
Diana Nyad , 64, a bulky-bodied writer and distance swimmer
Drew Carey, 56, an earnest but awkward regular-guy actor/comedian
NeNe Leakes, 47, a TV personality with an inflexible Amazonian body
Danica McKellar,
39, a sweet-faced actress with a weak chin
Candace Cameron, 38, an attractive actress who radiates wholesomeness
Amy Purdy, 35, a pretty paralympian double amputee
Sean Avery, 34, a handsome professional hockey player
Charlie
White, 27, an Olympic champion ice dancer
Meryl Davis, 27, an Olympic champion ice dancer
James Maslow, 24, a pretty-boy actor/singer
Cody Simpson, 17, an All-Australian boy pop singer
Winning the mirror ball on DTWS--
determined by some mystifying algorithmic combination of votes from the viewing public and from judges Len Goodman, Carrie Ann Inaba, and Bruno Tonioli -- is based 50% on dancing skill, 50% on physical attractiveness and charisma, and 50% on sentimental
appeal to a loyal fan base--or so Yogi Berra and I surmised after exchanging texts last week.
Look at the 17 previous winners:
The old: none
The middle-aged: Donny Osmond, wholesome, handsome, and monopolizer of the Mormon vote;
Jennifer Grey, Dirty Dancing's one-in-a-million-dollar "Baby," showing against all odds that she's still got the looks and the legs
The under (sometimes way under)-40s: Kelli Pickler, country-western sweetheart; Amber
Riley, hefty actress whose nimbleness confounds expectations; J.R. Martinez, visibly scarred Iraq War hero; Melissa Rycroft, Drew Lachey, Brooke Burke, Kelly Monaco (all young, good-looking, vibrant); Nicole Scherzinger, Emmitt Smith, Helio Castroneves,
Apolo Ohno, Kristi Yamaguchi, Shawn Johnson, Hines Ward, Donald Driver (all young, good-looking, athletic).
And look at just a few of the hopeless losers over the years, many of them pathetic shells of their former selves, stumbling stiffly and
clinging to their partners for dear life in a desperate attempt to sop up some last bit of attention's gravy before tottering into retirement: Cloris Leachman, John Ratzinger, Bill Nye, Tom DeLay, Jerry Springer, Bill Engvall.
To spare us all the cringe
factor, it would be best to invite as contestants only the young, the beautiful, and the graceful, but if, dear producers, you insist on including the old and the differently abled in the competition, for the sake of fairness place the dancers in categories
such as these:
The Betty White division (80 and over, charming but so very slow and weak)
The John O'Hurley division (60-80, sturdy but stumbling)
The Kirstie Alley division (40-60, way out of shape)
The Steve Wozniak division (40-60,
bumbling brainiacs)
The Tatum O'Neal division (any-age wearers of prosthetic devices)
The Gods and Goddesses division (20-40, splendid physical specimens, beautiful and powerful).
Thanking you in advance for changing your show according
to my suggestions, I remain your appreciative viewer,
Ecurb Snave
*****
To the Editor of the New York Times:
Most of the letters you publish are rational, well argued. They are honest and straightforward-- but oh so
full of certainty. They are cut and dried like a good high school student's five-paragraph essay. They start with a conviction expressed as a thesis and are followed by supporting paragraphs offering reasons for the validity of their conviction.
How I wish that at least a few of them would demonstrate a sense of agonized deliberation in which the writer's heart or viscera or instincts or intuition cries out for one emotionally satisfying course of action before he grudgingly, having struggled manfully
through his doing of due diligence, his thorough examination of evidence, reaches a cool, rational, inexorable, unsatisfying conclusion.
For once I'd like to read, say, not a writer who was clearly born possessing the anti-torture gene and who has since
found reasons to justify/explain his antipathy, but a writer who says, "You know, I hate the guts of all of the terrorists and alleged terrorists that we have captured and detained. I'd love to see them tortured within an inch of their lives.
I'd love to make them writhe in agony. The only trouble with water boarding and sleep deprivation is that they don't go far enough. Let's pull out their fingernails, then break the fingers that the nails came from. And let's keep 'em in prison
forever. Long live Gitmo! But, as sweet as that sounds, after doing my research I have to argue against torture because of the 'science.' The 'science' says that it's counter-productive. Not only does it not yield useful information,
but it causes prisoners either to lie or to be even less forthcoming than they would have been without the torturing. I had high hopes for it, but I've learned that enhanced interrogation just doesn't work."
In a similar vein, I'd like to read
a letter against capital punishment from one who really wishes we could use it to get even ("Speak not to me of justice, speak to me of revenge!") for certain types of crime, especially murder and treason, a writer who says, "Let's not only hang 'em high in
the public square but after they're dead cut 'em down and draw and quarter 'em and bestrew the ground with their entrails. However, having done some serious Googling, I must accede to the 'science,' studies showing that capital punishment is cruel
and unusual, is inequitably administered, and does not deter crime. Sadly, we just can't allow ourselves the pleasure of using it."
And one condemning the use of fossil fuels from a writer who adores capitalism, industrialization, and big corporations,
a freeway-clogging single driver who exults over the paving of America as he drives to work alone in his Suburban ("Mass transit this, baby")but concludes that he just has to bow to the 'science' that says human use of carbon is the major cause
of global warming.
And one narrowly defining 2nd Amendment rights from a writer who has a passion for guns and equates them with freedom ("Ain't nobody prying my gun from either my cold, dead hands or my hot, live ones") who is finally moved enough
by mass shootings by mad men to concede that the need for an armed citizen militia has been superseded by the largest military force in the history of the world and that stringent background checks of prospective gun purchasers would be a good first step toward
reducing the American atrocity rate.
And one from the cherisher of privacy rights who comes round to accepting the need for the NSA to have access to telephonic metadata; and one from the believer in governmental transparency who grants that it is sometimes
necessary to conduct clandestine, unauthorized special ops invasions, drone attacks, and cyber espionage and warfare.
We see too many adamantine, sang-froid letters wherein the cocksure superego dominates from opening line to concluding line.
Give us more transformative letters that show the pain involved in reining in the id and making room for ego to grow, as sang Freud.
Your faithful reader,
Bruce Evans
*****
Dear Editor of the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM):
Now you're talking! Now you're doing something for the common person. I'm so glad you're moving beyond those tired topics like paranoia, schizophrenia, and bi-polarity. I've long suspected that humans
have as many mental disorders as there are atoms in their bodies or stars in the multiverse, so kudos, kiddo, to you and your crew at the offices of the DSM for discovering new candidates for pharmacological treatment. First you came upon Attention
Deficit Hyperactive Disorder and its less obstreperous cousin Attention Deficit Disorder, and now you have found and dared to speak the name of another mental disorder that plagues us moderns and keeps us from achieving our full potential: "Sluggish
Cognitive Tempo." Throwing laser light on this heretofore unrecognized syndrome brings hope to those of us who have long suffered from, as you put it, " lethargy, daydreaming, and slow mental processing." Your definition describes me to a
fault--or to three faults, actually. No wonder I did so poorly in school; no wonder I have never achieved greatness. I'm not unmotivated, disorganized, or dumb; I simply have SCT. My tempo is off. I'll be on my way to brilliance and
achievement as soon as Big Pharma develops a pill that puts me back in sync. And , as long as we're on the subject, I wish you would investigate some other mental illnesses that I, or people of my acquaintance, suffer from, such as Moving Head
Syndrome (it's not that I'm bad at golf, softball, and tennis--I simply suffer from MHS); Drab Personality Disorder; Irony Deficiency Syndrome; Sulking Sickness; Fiscal Fecklessness; and Bulimorexia. Anything you can do to provide help soon for these
illnesses would be much appreciated. I'm not getting any younger, you know. That's right, I also have the dreaded INGAY disease, and it grows more threatening by the day.
Your ever-hopeful pill-popper,
Brooke Edjans (as yours
truly's name would be pronounced by an Oscar-presenting John Travolta)