Disgustibus non est Disputandum

I hate her but I can’t look away.  She is so proud of herself.  And it’s just small claims court.  Not the Supreme one.

The Brooklyn accent, the well-maintained, trim, little body, the self-satisfied chuckle when she’s made a weak joke at some poor schmuck’s expense.

And “poor” is the operative word here.  Who else would allow themselves to be humiliated on national television for a few hundred bucks?”

Every once in awhile, you’ll see a defendant who has had some higher education and his own teeth, but in the main, Judge Judy’s docket is filled with stupid, the craven, the unlettered, the unwashed, the desperate.

Which, in turn, brings us to an enormous irony.  Qui cum canibus concumbunt cum pulicibus surgent.  Usually.

And yet, as a direct result of rubbing elbows with these indigent, immoral, irresponsible uneducated, have-nots, J.J. is the highest paid entertainer on television.

Through the miracle that is syndication, she is raking in forty-five million dollars a year.

A year.  She is one smart cookie.  And a lucky one.

Thus, she can afford to show off her huge Connecticut estate to the likes of CBS Sunday Morning and Kelly Ripa.  She can play hostess to Barbara Walters (another N.J.G. who made very good later in life) on her yacht.

But, as she and husband Jerry Sheindlin lay in their California king and giggle and congratulate themselves on their incredible good fortune, I wonder does she ever worry if the taint of exploiting all these indigent know-nothings, will ever rub off on them?

She makes her living haranguing low lives, and dead beats, and scoff laws, and child-support shirkers, and welfare fraud finaglers, and rent skippers, and lease breakers, and broke boyfriends, and state aid scammers, and day care non-payers, and tax evaders, and people who just won’t keep their pit bulls on a leash.

Judge Judy’s kind of like a pit bull herself.  She shows the sad people who appear before her no mercy.  And she shows us -her audience- no understanding or empathy with their hapless predicaments, either.

Her concomitant disdain for her “co-stars” shows a basic lack of human empathy.  Her legal judgements may be sound, but she seems resolutely tone deaf and smug about her litigants-and her own superiority to them.

I understand it’s her business to judge the case.  But she judges the people, as well.

She always seems to forget that the deck of life has been stacked against most of these schnooks from the start.

Clearly they have not had the benefits of her fine parents, or good education, or even God-given things like brains or a home address in the United States.

I have no argument with her legal judgement in these cases.

It’s just that I think all these court shows are some form of pre-accepted arbitration deals.  I think all parties have already agreed to abide by any decision J.J. hands out, and the show itself pays the damages she assesses.

Which is another huge hypocrisy that drives me crazy.  If you are a viewing regular, (and heaven help you, if you are.  Your life must be …well… like mine) you will find that Judy is hipped on the idea of responsibility for one’s actions.

Fair enough.  If you do something wrong, you should acknowledge it, apologize, and then pay up.  Didn’t we all learn this in kindergarten?

Appparently not, because for fifteen minutes of airtime every session, the defendants go at each other tooth and nail, denying culpability in any of the wrongs of which they’ve been accused.

They paid their rent in cash, they gave the roommate a month’s notice, the car was stolen by someone else, the dog never bit that neighbor.  The baby wasn’t his.  The kid knew how to use the B.B. gun carefully.  He promised to pay it.  She said it was a gift.

The excuses are as interminable as they are unimaginative.

But now comes the fun part.  Because they- and Judge Judy- know that the guilty party will never have to pay out of their own empty pockets,  everyone involved has struck a deal with the devil.

In return for the show reimbursing the winner, (and appearance and travel fees paid to all) the losers allow Judy to hector, lecture, moralize, instruct, preen, posture, and call them names, all in the pursuit of justice- and huge ratings.

Every once in awhile, she gets to right an egregious wrong.

But for the most part, her televised high jinks benefit no one but herself, her children, her grandchildren, and that lucky bailiff, Petri Hawkins-Byrd.

He must be laughing “Order in the court” all the way to the bank.

Where do her producers find these poor saps?  Who is stupid enough to go before her willing to face all that abuse?

Anybody who has been given half of Judge Judy’s advantages, would never end up in her “courtroom.”  They’d plead their case in front of a truly fair, unbiased legal body, like the State of Illinois Divorce Court.

(Note to self:  I should have sued on Judge Judy.)