‘Outsourced’ Is Not A Laughing Matter

Friends and family say I have a wonderful sense of humor. Alas, I found none in watching the opening episode of NBC’s new comedy “Outsourced” Thursday night.

Normally I find amusement in cultural divides and the plight of the human condition.

This 30-minute disaster is insensitive to the millions of Americans who lost their jobs because of large corporations outsourcing their labor forces. The cultural differences between America and India were stereotype drivel.

Maybe I’m getting grumpy in my old age. After all, I was the guy with the loudest laughs when Carrol O’Connor played Archie mocking us for racial and religious bigotry in the Norman Lear comedy some three decades ago.

Sorry, but I cannot laugh when employees who through no fault of their own lose their jobs to foreigners who work for less wages and, if any, benefits.

I know the arguments why. Unions. The free capitalist system. The world is flat. Tax benefits to the corporations involved. But if you had a low-paying job and lost it to someone willing to work for less, it is not a funny situation. Try explaining that to your three-year-old child.

The Outsourced writers did manage to insert one raw nerve we all have experienced. It was what I considered a redneck who hung up the phone when he realized the company phone bank speaker was a foreigner from, gasp, India.

The cultural divide was highlighted by the nonsense of our wearing Green Bay Packer cheeseheads and paying for a plastic plate resembling human vomit.

The Indian culture and customs had the proverbial sacred cow wandering innocently through the boiler room office. Of course, there was the Indian cafeteria where the cuisine guaranteed five days of diarrhea.

The young Turks writing these scripts are cretins playing on our morbid senses and falling flat.

This is the price I pay for reviewing the new season television menu in search of entertaining morsels. Outsourced is not one and my opinion will be the kiss of death. By that, I mean the stupid show may survive the first cut and make it through the entire season.

Yuck.

Cross posted on The Remmers Report

Comments are welcome. Link to my blogsite or go to my email address at temeculakid@gmail.com . Remmers’ varied career spans 26 years in the newspaper business. Read a more thorough resume on The Remmers Report.