expectation she saw on the faces of her studio audience when she took the stage! It wasn’t her they’d come to watch; she never lost sight of that. Because she was a regular person who argued with her mother, who cleaned hair from her shower drain so that the cleaning lady didn’t have to. She was a woman who failed to floss, who needed to clean out her purse, who paged through People at the dentist’s office, just like most of them. They were here to see the woman who, upon seeing that magazine, could then book whoever interested her and interview them on this very stage. They were here to see the woman who sometimes made the cover herself.
On today’s show were a sociologist, a high-school superintendent, a Christian minister, and three teens—one boy and two girls. One of the girls was eight months pregnant. The topic was abstinence education.
In talking with Peter, TBRS’s producer, about this show, Blue had protested his suggestion that she open with an audience poll. Getting the audience involved in hot-button issues had in the past led to a Jerry Springer-like atmosphere that she had to work hard to redirect. Peter said, yes, but think of the drama. “We want people to engage,” he said. “And not only because it’s good for ratings.” She agreed in part; engagement was the point of it all, or was supposed to be the point.
He continued, “You saw the latest numbers. We’re slipping—just a little, and obviously we’ll bring it back up, but if we lose our edge right now, we lose our contract renewal leverage.” Lower ratings also led to lower ad revenues, lower production budgets, more difficulty in booking guests who had the power to draw viewers—all of which then trickled down to lower salaries for everyone on her payroll. Lower salaries meant good people jumped onto newer, flashier, competing ships. Ultimately, she’d agreed to do the poll.
Standing at the front of the stage, she welcomed the audience. Three hundred faces of all skin tones and both genders watched her eagerly, fans from any and every place on Earth. Beyond, too, she sometimes suspected. While Marcy claimed there was an angel in every audience, Blue rather thought there was an alien, who would inevitably write in to rant about how off-base she’d been on a particular topic, even if that topic was the fifty best uses of filo.
“Let me introduce you to some typical teens,” Blue said, and the two teenage girls appeared from the wings to take their seats behind her. Indeed, both girls were typical looking, with long brown hair and eye makeup and TV-modest clothing bearing popular-brand logos. Both girls were white.
Facing the audience, she said: “Kendra and Stacey—who is eight months pregnant—are seventeen-year-olds from intact middle-class families. Their parents are professionals. Both girls are B-students, involved in extracurricular activities—” this drew a chuckle from some of the audience—“and both have made preliminary plans to attend college. The main difference in these young women’s lives is that one of them attends a high school that follows an abstinence-only curriculum, and one attends a school where teenage sexuality is considered ‘normal’ and the students are educated accordingly. Abstinence is taught as one of several possible choices.”
She stepped down from the dais and walked to the lip of the stage. “With a show of hands: which of you thinks Stacey, our pregnant teen, got the sex-is-normal message?”
About half of the audience raised hands.
“Now who thinks Kendra did?”
Most of the other hands went up, as did the volume of voices, arguments already begun.
Blue waited a beat, resisting the urge to rub her face. Looking into Camera 4, she said, “The answer, when we come back.”
She allowed the rumbling to continue during the break, hoping the audience would get it out of the way now; things were not going to get better.
Taking a seat between the girls, she looked at each of their nervous faces. “Are you hanging in there?”
Kendra shrugged. Stacey shifted in her chair and smoothed her pink maternity top. “I’m okay, I guess,” she whispered.
In a moment, they were on air again. Blue said, “With me today are Kendra and Stacey, Chicago-area teenagers who, like most of their peers, are dealing as best they can with the pressures of growing up in our increasingly sexualized culture.
“Before the break I polled the audience on which of these girls received the teen-sex-is-normal message from her school, and which was taught to abstain until marriage.” She looked at Camera 2: “Brad, give us that tight view—audience, watch the screen.”
She waited, knowing that on the screen behind her would be a close-up image of a girl’s left hand, on which there was a silver ring. Brad nodded, and Blue continued, “This is known as a purity ring, representing adherence to the abstinence ideal: a vow of chastity, a promise to wait for the right man—or woman, because some young men are wearing them too—and marriage.
“Girls, raise your hands.”
Of the four hands now displayed, three were bare of jewelry, as they’d arranged ahead of time.
The silver glinted, of course, from Stacey’s left hand.
Amidst the reactions of surprise from many in the audience, and satisfaction from others, a skinny, dark-haired woman in the middle of the room stood up and yelled, “Sinner! Hypocrite! Take off that ring!”
Stacey’s face crumpled. “It’s not wrong! I love him,” she said, then burst into tears.
And before Blue could stop herself, she did, too.
* * *
After refereeing fifteen rounds between the sociologist and the minister—had Peter chosen such a closed-minded, sanctimonious old man on purpose?—Blue escaped the set the minute they were clear. Reverend Mark Masterson, a tall, self-serious man with heavy jowls and bottle-black hair, followed her backstage.
“Just what do you think you’re going to accomplish by telling teenage girls to go ahead and have sex?”
“Was that what I said?”
“You made that child out to be a hero.”
He’d made no secret of his disdain for the facts and the statistics, which were the substance of her supposed endorsement. Blue looked at him coolly. “And you made her out to be a whore—I’m sorry, ‘whoremonger’ was your word, wasn’t it? I thought you were a minister, but apparently you’re a judge.”
He frowned down at her, his height giving him an illusion of superiority she was sure he made the most of. He said, “When I agreed to do this show, I was under the impression that you had a conscience.”
“And I was under the impression that someone who has committed to serving his community would at least attempt to do so.”
He straightened the lapels of his brown suit jacket and picked off a spot of lint. “These are children we’re talking about. They require firmness and absolutes to shut down ungodly urges. Romans chapter eight verse thirteen for example: ‘For if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.’”
“So Stacey must die? That’s a reasonable punishment.”
“Now let’s not be ridiculous. The Bible permits a certain amount of
