What’s good for the goose

Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham

Didn’t anybody in charge of pop culture read the story about the goose that laid the golden egg?

Let me rephrase that – because I’m sure that they did.

OK, I’m sure that they at least looked at the pretty pictures.

(Or, I should say, at most looked at the pretty pictures. I mean, we are talking about TV and movie producers and such. Not exactly the brightest stars in the sky.)

Ahem, so as I was saying … the goose that laid the golden egg.

There was a moral to that story.

The moral – don’t kill the friggin’ goose.

That’s what we’ve been doing here for, oh, about the last decade or so – ever since “Survivor,” “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” and Fox News became pop sensations.

Remember how everybody had to have their version of “Survivor,” “Millionaire” and Bill O’Reilly after that?

Yeah, how exciting those times were.

Same as when everybody had to have their turn on the movie involving a mother and daughter or father and son who mysteriously switched bodies and had to live life through the different set of eyes that such a madcap situation would force upon one.

They make one of those movies every year – for release alongside the latest Hugh Grant-playing-a-sassy-something-or-the-other star vehicle and something artfully inane involving Steve Martin.

Speaking of the inane, we have “American Idol,” which we can thank for the 15 minutes of fame being awarded right now to the megauntalented Taylor Hicks, and its various and unimaginative ripoffs – seriously, whoever gave the go-ahead to that idiotic show featuring inventors ought to be sentenced to community service cleaning up after Wiggles concerts.

And don’t even get me started on television news – where we have two archetypes, the brooding conservative administration mouthpiece and the brooding liberal administration critic, doing battle 24-7, with whatever Nancy Grace is supposed to be in terms of her place in society thrown in for good measure.

(Some village down in the Deep South is missing its resident airhead – and if you’re willing and able to find a home for her, please, would you come take her back? Thanks.)

It would be nice to see something original – though I know what would happen if this original TV show or movie or whatever were to hit it big, as things often do.

Somebody would decide that they liked it so much that they had to make it theirs – and then, well, we’d be back to square one.