SOMETHING I HEARD ON a talk show one time—I think maybe it was Cher who said it—really got me thinking. Just because a person wears nice clothes and shaves her legs more than once a year doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a deep side, you know?
Obviously, Cher is another example of an individual such as myself, because one thing I learned from this program was what a spiritual person she really is. She said this quote I’ll always remember. It was a question actually: “If a tree falls in the middle of a forest, where no one’s around to see it, did it really fall at all?”
I thought a lot about that. What’s the point of doing something if nobody sees you? That makes about as much sense as seeing this great meal on the table, and nobody’s there to eat it. Which reminds me of an article I read in the National Enquirer—a publication I don’t make a habit of reading, but it was the only thing they had at the beauty parlor that day— about this minister out in Nevada who has been preaching sermons every Sunday for all these years, even though nobody’s left in his congregation. Now if you ask me, that isn’t holy. It’s just dumb.
The way I see it, everything people do in the world, the whole point is having an audience, having someone else see it. I mean, artists like to put their paintings in museums, right? And musicians generally like to have people listen to their music. Not having someone there is kind of like the tree falling in the forest, if you follow me.
That’s the beauty of television. It’s like an eye that’s on you all the time. Watching even if nobody’s around and recording what you do. And knowing it’s there makes you be a better person in so many ways. Kind of like God, if you want to get heavy.
Say you’re in this cabin in the woods and nobody’s going to stop by all weekend. Do you have any reason to take a shower and put on your makeup? But now suppose you’re going on the “Today” show? Naturally you pull yourself together a little more.
If everybody’s house had one of those TV cameras in it all the time, like the kind they have in banks and stores to check on shoplifters, do you think mothers would still scream at their children and hit them? Do you think Deborah Norville was always so nice to her husband as she used to be to Joe Garagiola and Willard Scott and Bryant Gumbel? And why not? There’s no TV camera in her living room.
Take Oprah’s diet. Look what happened to her. She was fat, then she went on this big diet and lost sixty-seven pounds. She came back on her show hauling a wagon full of sixty-seven pounds of hamburger meat and wearing these tight jeans, looking fantastic. And for a while everybody was talking about how she did it, and how great it was, and it looked like she was finally going to marry Steadman Graham and everything would turn out great.
Then what happened? She started eating wrong again. Never on television, mind you. You never saw Oprah sitting on her show, eating a plate full of french fries. The problem was, she wasn’t on television every minute. Sometimes they turned the cameras off her. That’s when she got into trouble. And now look at her, fat as ever.
You can say, oh well, that’s her true self coming out, and the person she shows us on television is just a façade, whatever you want to call it. But as far as I’m concerned, what’s wrong with a façade, so long as it’s a nice one? If being true to yourself means gaining back sixty-seven pounds, I’d just as soon be a little dishonest.
This is why I have always aspired to being on television. Because it brings out the best in a person. As long as you’re on TV, someone’s always watching you. If people could just be on TV all the time, the whole human race would probably be a much better group of individuals. The only catch is, naturally, if everybody was on TV, there wouldn’t be anyone left to watch. Now I’m actually driving my own self crazy. Which can be a problem with me. One time I got so tangled up in these thoughts of mine I forgot all about turning myself over in the tanning booth, and was I ever a mess.