Simply '70s: Mary Hartman predicts 2011

Mary Hartman! Mary Hartman!

In high school, I was hooked on Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman simply because it was the edgiest, cuttingest, wickedest (and most wickedly funny . . . when not wickedly painful) thing on television. In many ways, it was Monty Python meets Paddy Chayefsky.

And, come to think of it, this deeply satirical late-night soap opera was just about as prophetic as Chayefsky's Network that same year -- 1976. Here, we see a parody of public television that comes to resemble the modus operandi of today's alternate reality of cable news -- where infotainment uses real people as weapons (and cannon fodder) to fight ideological battles for the amusement of their viewers.

Except, of course, when they use real people as salacious chum to draw viewers like one might lure sharks.

Young Rev. Jimmy Joe Jeeter got off easier than today's average media consumer, I say.