Shakes here...
In one of my favorite episodes, “Please Don't Kill Me,” of one of my favorite shows, Mr. Show, an evil genius called Dr. X holds the world hostage with threats to blow up the earth—a plan which is inevitably thwarted by an annual Doomsday Telethon, held by—who else?—Dr. X, who pleads with people to contribute generously to the thirty million dollar goal. He brings out a poster boy for the telethon who is prodded by Dr. X in a baby voice, “Tell ze audience vat you told me backstage,” to which the boy replies, “Please don’t kill me.” Dr. X’s face breaks into a saccharine grin. “Awwww. Dis is vhy I do dis,” he says, a tear in his eye. “For de kids.”
As with every sketch on the brilliant Mr. Show, there’s the obvious send-up of straightforward telethons, and then there’s the underlying scorcher—the nod at our society’s propensity to endanger people, only to give ourselves an opportunity to appear to save them.
“Please Don't Kill Me” first aired in 1997, but it was a prescient indicator of things to come. I often feel, reviewing the news of Bush's determination to manipulate us into a war which subsequently opened a new terrorist front from which he now professes to save us, that I'm living in an endless Doomsday Telethon.
