TV "judge" dispels myths about gender and "superior" traits

Having my “weekends” on week days has the benefit of allowing me to take care of personal business when everything is “open.” On the other hand, it also unfortunately gives me the opportunity to see how the television tube keeps unemployed and stay-at-home types entertained—especially the networks. This includes “The People’s Court,” which I recall initially featured a Judge Wapner who held “court” over small claims proceedings. Since then there has been a proliferation of these TV judges. At first, or at least with Wapner, these were fairly mundane affairs in which its novelty was enough to capture an audience. 

But things changed, thanks first to “Judge Judy” and then the current “People’s Court” figurehead, Marilyn Milian. Both of these women seem to prefer competing with Jerry Springer’s embarrassing theatrics and his dredging of the sewers of low-life society. All of the accolades I have read describing Milian in particular can only be explained by either gender politics or how audiences have been brain-damaged by the programming “context” in which these court shows operate in. 

Now, I’m sure that some people “get-off” on “sass,” loudness, haughtiness, wild gesticulation, unabashed disdain, rudeness and contemptuous behavior—the kind of thing that would give a defendant a half-dozen grounds for appeal in a 10-minute span, or get a judge disbarred—but to me this kind of behavior dispels any number of myths that one might harbor about the nature of gender traits.

Yesterday I saw Milian telling a defendant that she wasn’t interested in anything he had to say, and lectured the female plaintiff about how women needed to learn to be “strong” and “self-reliant,” and not be “kind” and “gentle.” Milian’s own behavior bears this out, except that one wonders if what she means by “strong” and self-reliant” is being purposefully offensive and unjust. Or it might mean being "courageous" for the 52-year-old to be cavorting in nothing but her bikini briefs on some "private" Caribbean beach, where an intrepid paparazzi photographed the bilious scene.

Milian used to be work in the Miami County Domestic Violence Court, which not surprisingly would produce an insufferably hypocritical “judge” with a gender politics agenda. Milian has been accused being a misandrist in her rulings, but occasionally she “scolds” female litigants when it is necessary to get them “straight” in a “patriarchal” society. If she presides over a “matriarchy,” I find it difficult to discern any “improvement.” 

During one proceeding, a doctor who Milian was speaking to in the usual contemptuous manner had enough and asked her to refer to him as “Dr.” Milian gesticulated like a spastic on speed and “informed” him that “respect” needed to be “earned.” The doctor calmly informed her that where he came from, respect was something you were born with, which only further maddened her. Later, when Milian was frustrating the plaintiff, the doctor apparently decided to play Good Samaritan and interject that her behavior was lacking in “respectfulness,” Milian again flew into immodest rage and ordered the doctor out of the “court” with the “hope” that the plaintiff would clobber him on the way out. People like talk show personalities Jimmy Kimmel and Ellen DeGenerate might be impressed by these antics, but I frankly find them the product of a “disturbed” mind. How do people like this become judges?

Milian is a Caucasian Cuban-American and thus naturally a Republican, often spouting “wisdom” from both ends on the show. On one show in 2009, Milian called both an investor in an Internet marketing business and the owner of the business “criminals” wanting to get “something for nothing”—before launching into a rage against government bailouts, banks and people who don’t want to take “personal responsibility” regardless of who is at fault. 

Of course, all of this makes for good ratings, but is it “justice?” Frankly, no. Some detractors have noted that for all her arrogance and conceit, some litigants actually seem to know more about justice, common sense and the law than Milian does. But more interesting to me that is that she and “Judge Judy” are living proof that women are the “same” as men—and maybe even worse in some respects.