Written by Fumo Verde
Penn & Teller’s Bullshit is the one reason I still have Showtime. Here is a real reality show, and I’m not talking crybaby drama of who slept with who’s who. There’s no magic tricks revealed, just the bullshit that clogs are everyday view of what is going on in the real world around us. Past seasons have dealt with such wackiness as aliens abducting people to the truth behind the Ouiji boards (we all know that stuff is bullshit), to other subjects like “The Business of Love” and my favorite “the War on Drugs”. This is the only show I’ve seen that confronts these matters head on and brings people the real truth, whether they want it or not.
Two DVDs make up season six with episodes that include “New Age Medicine,” “NASA,” “Dolphins” and a whole host of others that will make yearn for more truth. One of my favorites of this season is “The War on Porn”. In this episode P&T show us that the only people at war with the porn industry are religious groups and feminine activists.
Now, some might say this show doesn’t give a fair chance to the opposition when presenting their argument. Bullshit! The people who P&T interview for their show know full well what to expect when this episode airs. So when the woman who will tell us in one breath that watching pornography will lead us to child porn and murder, and in the same breath tell us that there is “no good study” or scientific data which will back up her said statement, then of course I must laugh when these comic magic men rip on her and make fun of everything she says. Why? Because what she is saying is bullshit and to present your ideas as facts with out any scientific way of proving it, then yes you are to be laughed at. Don’t get them wrong, P&T believe everybody should be allowed to voice their opinions in our democracy, but when one group is out to “destroy” the livelihood of another group with false statements built as a façade to hide the real truth, then bullshit must be called, and this show does just that.
“Being Green” was one of those episodes that changed my mind about global warming. I followed the crowd when Al Gore spoke and believed carbon taxes would set us straight, until P&T warmed away the bullshit. They aren’t saying that global warming isn’t happening, but they did put it into a bigger perspective. The Earth’s climate has changed numerous times in the last billion years and it will keep on changing. Are we as humans moving it along faster? Possibly, but that data is still being tested and reviewed. The one thing for sure is our Earth has gone through some super-extreme climate changes, which killed almost everything that has ever lived, and it will continue to do so. We call it, and it is what I firmly believe in, evolution.
This show brings the evidence for both sides of whatever argument into play and they let the interviewees debate each other in a non-combative way where there isn’t a bunch of talking heads yelling at each other and bringing everything down to the lowest common denominator. Each side gets a chance to discuss what they believe to be the facts that will support their stance. Penn and Teller bring all this into focus under a comical light and let you the viewer decided for yourself whether something is real or bullshit.
