For a while I've been nursing the idea that the pretend-courtroom shows on TV reflect the theologies of their respective fans through the characters of the judges, which accord with the fans' various conceptions of God. The God of the Hebrews, for example--stern but kindly, just but merciful, and once in a while quick to wrath--would be personified in Judge Joe Brown. My own idea of God is most nearly approached by Judge Milian on "The People's Court," who comes across to me as the sexiest wife in her suburb, the one whom every man desires but none will ever have, which seems a roughly accurate carnal equivalent of man's yearning for the divine.
The most popular, or at any rate the most famous, pretend-court judge is Judge Judy. I don't doubt that most of her viewers are of the same class as most of her (so-called) litigants: working (or non-working) class people, who, if asked outright, would never describe God as resembling Judge J, but whose view of the universe He created and its mysterious ways, as discovered through their experience--especially their experience of the temporal powers--is epitomized in Judge J's court. If you stand up requesting simple justice, you're liable as not to be knocked down, depending solely on the whim of the deity; you come complaining of undeserved ill treatment, get more of it, and go out with less dignity than when you started.
Often on "reality" shows, you're seeing something other than what you think you're seeing, so it's possible the TV judges are all playing parts and Judge J isn't what she appears to be, a disgusting bully. But viewers can only go by appearances. If she really behaved in court as she behaves on her show, she was a disgrace to the bench; now she's a disgrace to the tube, if such a thing is possible. The victims of her persecution are usually poor, ill educated, and not wholly articulate, and these handicaps, which should stir her pity, only stir her wish to harass. One of her favorite bully's tricks is to ask the victim an unanswerable question and then after he (or she) has pieced out a response, trying hard to get it just right, to use it as a basis for insulting him. When she takes a dislike to a litigant, she's apt to deny him what he's legally entitled to, and when he protests, another of her favorite mockeries is to say "bye-bye" in a baby voice, rubbing salt in the wound. In one case, a woman who had done her homework before coming in began to cite the law on which her claim was based. Hardly had she begun when Judge J cut her off, screaming, "DON'T YOU SPOUT THE LAW TO ME!!!" This amounted to saying: Don't tell me anything I don't know, I'd rather stay an ignorant bitch.
To hear her tell it, however, she's the only smart one in the room. On the slightest provocation, or none, she insults people to their faces with wearying regularity: "YOU'RE A BUM!!!" "YOU'RE STUPID!!!" "YOU'RE A LIAR!!!" This last, she favors particularly. That it is often untrue can be seen from the dismay on the victims' faces, and when they begin to protest that they are not liars, Judge J yells at them to shut up. In sum, she behaves like the crazy lady in your neighborhood who screams out her window at random passers-by; yet on this show, through a bizarre but not untypical quirk of the universe's, she has been given a judge's bench, or at least a pretend one. So why would anyone have any trouble imagining that she or someone worse will be manning that greater bench when the roll is called up yonder? The Crazy Lady as God.
To me the case that revealed the essential insanity of the entire Judy-icial system was one in which a woman sought to recover the cost of a car that had somehow been appropriated by someone else. In passing, she mentioned the car's stereo system, which of course it was necessary for her to do in order to recover its value, and this set her up to be shoved around. "Have you started a college fund for your daughter?" Judge J demanded. The woman, a single mom living on food stamps, was at first baffled by the patent absurdity of the question, but at last admitted she had not done so. "THEN YOUR CAR IS MORE IMPORTANT TO YOU THAN YOUR DAUGHTER!!!" saith Judge J. Of course the woman denied it, and the response of her wealthy, well-educated tormentor was to repeat the accusation in the same words, only louder. The woman might fairly have replied: No, but the addition of a car stereo, if you can get a break on it, as you always can, is within the capacity of a person on food stamps, as a college fund is not, and music is more important than college, and have-able now. If she had dared to say as much--if any of Judge J's victims ever did--it might surprise her into betraying the sort of response she would really like to give: "YOU DON'T DESERVE MUSIC!!! YOU DESERVE NOTHING BECAUSE YOU'RE POOR!!! THE GOOD THINGS IN LIFE ARE FOR MONEYED PEOPLE LIKE ME!!!" Then she would probably flog the woman, if she could. But, come to think of it, with such weapons as she had at her disposal--nasty words and a pretend judgment--she did.
