Casual
PODHORETZ, JOHN
Casual ONE LIFE TO WASTE Hello. My name is John, and I'm a soap-opera addict. At this point, you're supposed to shout, "Hello, John," so that I will feel welcomed and safe while discussing my...
...Eventually, we gave up on Another World and moved on to One Life to Live...
...Anything can happen...
...They gave her a split personality, so that while Vicki remained wonderful, her alter ego, Nicki, was very bad indeed...
...Soaps are like sports teams...
...But I became a soap devotee at the age of 6, thanks to my older sister Ruthie...
...She eventually became a heroine, but heroines are boring, so the producers came up with an inventive notion: Vicki could be both a good guy and a bad guy...
...I watched One Life , to Live 30 years ago, so I watch it L and its ABC brethren now...
...I got hooked on General Hospital during college, when I found myself home in the afternoon and wanted to see what all the fuss was about...
...Coward...
...Now she's trying to drive Vicki's teenage daughter insane...
...But even that number is enormous compared with my specific demographic category, which may be the smallest grouping in the entire, 281-million-strong U.S.A...
...They make little or no dramatic sense...
...I'd guess there are maybe four people like me in the whole country...
...But I know that even in this culture of confession, there are some behaviors that go beyond the bounds of acceptable conduct...
...Their appeal is so obvious I can't understand why others don't share my passion...
...The newest, Passions, is two years old...
...Hell, men don't watch soap operas at all...
...They change personnel rand styles on a yearly basis...
...ABC has four, including General Hospital...
...But once you've committed to them, you've chosen them above the competition...
...Soap operas are to drama what junk food is to real food...
...Indeed, I am so addicted to soap operas that I will occasionally sample a Spanish-language soap from Mexico or Colombia on Univision or Tele-mundo, even though they speak far more quickly than my high-school Spanish-level ears can comprehend...
...They've been divorced, but now they're about to get married again...
...General Hospital briefly became a major pop-culture sensation 20 years ago when its storyline about a rapist named Luke falling in storybook love with his own victim, Laura, became a consuming national obsession...
...We'd get home from school just in time to join our nanny, Imelda, in a daily viewing of a soap called Another World...
...JOHN PODHORETZ...
...They have a son named Lucky who was brainwashed by the same woman who tried to kill everybody in the town of Port Charles 20 years ago with a nefarious weather machine that caused it to snow in July...
...The CBS soaps are a little too frilly in set decoration for me...
...Soap operas are never-ending ' § dramas with daily cliffhangers —i and multiple storylines...
...Not ( so, clearly, when it comes to soap-opera-watching men...
...The oldest, Guiding Light, has been broadcast continuously on radio and television for 61 years...
...Society will not, cannot forgive...
...I love plot, and soap opera is plot run amok...
...The villainess was named Vicki Lord...
...I'm a straight, Jewish, soap-opera-watching man who votes Republican...
...According to demographic research, the daytime soap-opera audience skews 90 percent—90 percent!—female...
...I would have preferred a cartoon, but was outvoted...
...There are nine daytime soap operas in English...
...Now I'm in my 40s, and I'm home in the afternoons again because I work at home...
...Men constitute a minority population in America, but at least we're close to par...
...Daytime network soap operas affect me the way rock cocaine affects a crackhead: The impact is immediate, the pleasure intense (though fleeting...
...Nothing is allowed to get in the way of a story, not even elementary logic...
...Supernatural events occur and then are quickly forgotten...
...At this point, you're supposed to shout, "Hello, John," so that I will feel welcomed and safe while discussing my addiction...
...But my criticisms of the other networks don't really account for my ABC bias...
...Characters change from good to evil in a few weeks' time...
...A grown man watching a soap opera...
...I favor the ABC soaps...
...The NBC soaps are even more ridiculous and hysterical than the ABC plotlines I've told you about...
...Or maybe you do, and you're just unwilling to admit it...
...You only see i numbers like that when you're talking about Jews voting Democratic...
...Real men don't watch soap operas...
...NBC, whose soaps are the least popular, airs two...
...They are heavily plotted, but the plots move slowly so people can keep track even if they only watch occasionally...
...Often, though, I find myself monitoring One Life to Live, where the evil Nicki is still popping up every so often...
...CBS, which has the most popular soaps, airs three...
...One Life to Live is an ABC soap...
...Luke is pushing 50...
...Luke and Laura remain on General Hospital to this day...
...There's a television on my desk so that I can monitor news events...
Vol. 7 • July 2002 • No. 43
