The Game Show network is airing reruns of Family Feud (1976-1985), my favorite game show as a kid. Back then, Family Feud was not hosted by the gravelly-voiced Louie Anderson or the hyper clean-cut Ray Combs. No, it was hosted by a guy that seemed dirty then and dirtier now, Richard Dawson.

If you are young enough or foreign enough not to know about Richard Dawson, allow me to explain. Richard Dawson lip-kissed just about every female contestant on the show, multiple times, every episode. Since the game pits five members of one family against five members of another, that's usually a lot of contestants to make the rounds on. When he came to ask a question to one, not only would he move in for a smooch, he'd hold their hands, and at the end, when two members of the winning team must take turns standing out in the middle of the stage to answer some questions under the timer, he would cuddle close -- a full body cuddle, mind you -- when it was over, and the answers and their scores would be revealed.

As a kid, this struck me as weird and wrong, and it confused the heck out of me as to how all these wives and mothers and daughters were ok smooching with the guy. I remember my fourth grade teacher talking to us about that show one time. She said that if she were ever on that show, and he came to kiss her, she would "turn her head in shame." From her indignant tone of voice, it was evident that she meant she would be ashamed of *him*, not shamed for herself. Anyway, that may be why she was never on the show. I can't imagine that willingness to kiss Richard Dawson wasn't a requirement demanded in the contestant screening process.

Now that I'm older, I look back on this show, and it strikes me as weirder and wronger and even more confusing. Age has not brought me understanding. I still don't get it. WHAT was that show all about?? I can't figure out why such an otherwise unassuming, *nice* show would have such a creepy undercurrent to it. I can't understand why mainstream, middle-class America so embraced this show.

Thankfully, I'm pretty sure it would not be embraced today, at least not marketed to the same mainstream, middle-class audience that it always was. If Louie Anderson kissed the contestants all the time, I'm pretty sure there would be a lot of protest about it. There would be cries about sexual harassment: I don't think turn of the millennium society would have any reservations about applying that term to the expectation that a contestant agree to make out with the host in order to be on a show.

In the eighties, sexual harassment was (arguably) not taken as seriously as it is now, but this still does not explain to me why the show appealed to the audiences it did. Nor does it explain how the idea was ever conceived in the first place, nor why anybody thought it would be a good idea.

I like the game itself. The RinkChat game BlitzBot is modelled after Family Feud. I've played it online at Uproar on occasion. I catch the Louie Anderson show once in a while. But I can't generally bring myself to watch the reruns of the Richard Dawson show on the The Game Show network, even though I watched it avidly as a kid, because I cringe too much every time he gropes the players.

Worse, some of the women welcome it. There was one woman that, when Dawson came around to talk to each of the players, kissed him once for some friend of hers, once for some other friend of hers, and once again for herself. WHAT?? I practically retched. It's bad enough to give a dirty old man a TV show and air his moves, but quite another to revere this man as a sort of live blarney stone. And he's ugly as heck, too.

I can't even voice my confusion very well, but I guess what this post basically boils down to is, how on earth could American society, circa 1980, have been so messed up as to not only turn a blind eye to this nauseous practice but apparently embrace it?