Sopranos fans - If HBO wants so-called innovative programming, maybe they could produce a reality show with recently-released Dr. Kervorkian

[Oops - it's Kevorkian, not Kervorkian. I'm gonna get whacked now.]

I turned my car into the shop this morning, so I was still on the road at 9:am today and ended up listening to Jim Rome.

Now usually I don't listen to Jim Rome because he has a tendency to drive a point into the ground.

Rome will take some observation or another, and he'll just hammer at it and drive it into the ground.

And then he'll pause.

And he will make the same point over again.

He'll harp on the point, over and over.

And he'll drive it into the ground.

(You think it's hard to read it, just try listening to it.)

Anyway, this morning Rome was yapping and reading fake e-mails about the season finale of "The Sopranos," a show which airs on HBO and is therefore branded as "innovative" because it is on HBO. (HBO's slogan: "We say $%@! a lot." Showtime's slogan: "We say $%@! more than HBO does.")

I guess that the general attitude from the pundits that be is that the last episode of "The Sopranos" was a disappointment...because they didn't kill a bunch of people in the last scene.

But don't take it from me or Rome; take it from Johnny Salami:

"David Chase (the show's creator and writer ) should have put some bite into it. He left us hanging," said Johnny Salami, 43, of Rutherford, New Jersey.

"Maybe if you're from Oklahoma or California you don't care, but if you're from New Jersey, you want some closure."

Salami was in Lodi, New Jersey, at the Satin Dolls go-go lounge -- which since 1999 has doubled as the show's notorious, mob-run strip joint, the Bada Bing. About 200 fans gathered there to watch the final episode.

The strippers wore G-strings with the legend "Bada Bing." And out of respect, they stopped dancing for the show.

And the house lights probably went black right before the strippers' final bumps and grinds.

So how does HBO win back the loyalty of Jim Rome, Johnny Salami and others who demand innovative television? Well, perhaps HBO will sign an exclusive deal with Dr. Jack Kevorkian. The good doctor is on two years' probation, but after that he can resume his killing spree, and HBO can televise every minute of it and get a ton of Emmy awards. And a ton of praise.

But not everyone is happy. Stand to Reason links to a Wesley J. Smith article:

[T]he...media is likely to extravagantly tout Kevorkian as the compassionate, if eccentric, retired doctor who helped desperate, terminally ill people put themselves out of their misery.

In actuality, most of Kevorkian’s “patients” were not terminally ill, but disabled and depressed. Several weren’t even sick, according to their autopsies. Moreover, Kevorkian never attempted to treat any of the 130 or so persons who traveled to Michigan to be hooked up to his suicide machines to die either by drug overdose or carbon monoxide poisoning.

And as for compassion — forget about it. Kevorkian was never in the killing business to alleviate unbearable suffering....

His first targets were condemned prisoners. Indeed, as far back as 1959, Kevorkian wrote in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminal Political Science:

"Capital punishment as it exists today offers a golden opportunity to break…limits [on human experimentation] by introducing into the situation an involuntary factor without destroying the necessary safeguard of consent. I propose that a prisoner condemned to death by due process of law be allowed to submit, by his own free choice, to medical experimentation under complete anesthesia (at the time appointed for administering the penalty) as a form of execution in lieu of conventional methods."

And I'll succumb to Godwin's Law...although actually Dr. Jack was the one who brought up the reference, back in 1985:

"The so-called Nuremberg Code and all its derivatives completely ignore the extraordinary opportunities for terminal experimentation on humans facing imminent and inevitable death...[including] the extraction of medical benefit from the process of judicial execution from those dying of irremediable illness or trauma and from suicide mandated by inflexible religious or philosophical principles or by irrevocable personal choice. Other potential subjects include comatose, brain dead, or totally incapacitated individuals as well as live fetuses in or out of the womb."

A really innovative guy. HBO will love him. And Jim Rome will be pleased.

And he'll be very happy.

And this will be a good thing for Jim Rome.

Wait, I just got an e-mail:

Dear OE:

I agree with you that Jim Rome is a very bad radio host.

Signed,

Chevy Chase, a very bad TV host

jimrome

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