Best Thing on TV

Stumbled onto Morgan Spurlock's new FX series "30 Days" last night, and I could not turn away. They were replaying the initial episode, which premiered June 15th, where Morgan and his girlfriend give up their credit cards, their bank account, and move to Columbus, Ohio, to see if they can make it on minimum wage for a month.

It's a shattering experience, captured with humor. Morgan comes across as an amiable American Everyman who takes life -- and other people -- as he finds them. That impression of honest humanity is born out on Morgan's blog. His show features a variety of other Americans who voluntarily give up what they have and who they are to go "walk in someone else's shoes" for a solid month. For example, a born-again Christian from West Virginia goes to live in an American Muslim community in Detroit. If the show I saw last night is any indication at all, these excursions across the cultural barricades are both funny and very revealing. On the show last night, an older black guy who Spurlock is sharing a ride with - a fellow day-laborer -- says, "I'm making less money this morning than I did [on] my first job 29 years ago. I got my first job in 1976 at GM. My starting wage was $7.55 an hour. This morning I'm going out in 2005 and making $7 -- with no insurance. They call this prosperity. But you know, they say, 'We can't pay what the big automakers paid.' I always say, 'OKay, can you pay me what they were paying a quarter of a century ago?' "

The Republicans in Congress have not allowed the minimum wage to rise from $5.15 in eight years. So this particular show was probably not welcomed in Republican households where everybody's fat and sassy. In Republican households where everybody's NOT fat and sassy (i.e., on minimum wage), WHY on earth are they still Republicans?

Spurlock got famous last year by eating McDonald's three times a day for 30 days (and "super-sizing" every time he was asked). He made of himself a human guinea pig, filmed the process, and got nominated for an Academy Award for "Supersize Me." Not bad for a guy who was rejected by the U.S.C. film school five times.

Spurlock was born the same year I came to Boone, 1970, in Parkersburg, W.Va. He knows hard-scrabble. He knows this country, too, from the ground up, and it's a pure-dee good thing that he's out there offering his eye on things.