The Father of All Paternity Tests

Typically, I try not to consume too many daytime talk shows. I don’t usually watch the Maury Povich show since it is typically just a large woman yelling at a tiny little man about how he was a dead beat dad and he responds by shouting that it is not his kid (typically with much worse grammar). Maury then opens an envelope and reveals to the world whether or not this tiny man is the large woman’s “baby’s daddy.” Maury has become famous for his dramatic paternity test shows where he reveals the father of a child to the promiscuous parents.

It is also rare that I find something that seems so intriguing to me that I am afraid to change the channel for fear that I may miss something. However, as I was searching for something to distract me from starting any sort of productivity this morning, I saw the Maury Povich show. As I was about to change the channel I read the title. This intrigued me, so much so that I had to stay tuned for the rest of the show.

The title of the show was: “I was in a coma…I can’t be your baby’s daddy.” Now I am not a doctor. I have had no traditional medical training; but this seemed like a pretty sound defense. Au contraire, this man had, in fact, been in a coma for 15 months after being shot in the head and still somehow found a way to be the father of this woman’s child.

I have made strong attempts to not figure out the exact logistics of how this child came to be. Many communications studies discuss how television programming has hardened us, causing us to stop realizing just how bizarre many things that we see on TV are. This seems reasonable until something like this happens, and you realize that nothing could have hardened you to the point where you don’t find this bizarre.