MAURY: "LET’S GET MIKEY, HE WON’T CARE"

Flipping TV channels one morning the other week, I caught a hidden video of two young girls in pajamas guzzling vodka from a bottle as they sat on a bed in a darkened bedroom.

The footage turned out to be part of a Maury Povich show about extremely unruly kids. The two girls, ages 8 and 11, are sisters and they told Maury on his talk show stage in front of an audience that they were both addicted to alcohol. The mother, sitting next to them, explained to Maury that she bought liquor and wine for her own enjoyment and didn’t know how to keep her children from sneaking it from high up in her kitchen cabinets.

When asked in pre-recorded footage what they thought of their mother, both girls used the words "bitch" and "whore," among other slurs that were bleeped out. When asked if they loved their mother, the oldest daughter gave a flat "No" while the youngest admitted, "I don’t know."

This was all I could bear and turned the TV off. The whole thing was heartbreaking. Of course, no person or situation is non-exploitable in daytime talk shows like Maury’s and there’s no regard for even a young child’s life outside of its potential entertainment value.