Canada's Dragon Den -- The Pit of Businessman Cliches

"Mean TV" is all the rage. Simon Cowell has made a career out of being an irredeemable cocksucker. Judge Judy has become a celebrity by demonstrating, episode after tiresome episode, that she's an irredeemable cunt. Show me a show where there are judges or a "panel" of some kind, and I'll show you a gaggle of shitheads working out their adolescent hostility because they weren't picked for the yearbook staff or didn't make the wiffle ball team in high school.

Enter CBC's The Dragon's Den on which Canadian inventors and entrepreneurs, as well as crackpots and morons take the stage, show their wares, air their money-making ideas, in hopes of impressing the panel of "dragons" -- successful Canadian business people -- to give them substantial dollars in venture capital.

I normally hate such shows, but found this one morning while channel surfing and thought it would be cool to check out some of the inventions and business ideas of ordinary Canadians. What I found, instead, was a painful, awful showcase of all that's worst and most hated about business people.

Right off, watching The Dragon's Den is like watching a series of job interviews. Yeah, there's something terrible and morbidly compelling about that, but if I want the morbidly compelling, I'll go to Rotten.com. On The Dragon's Den, I wanted to see some Canadian ingenuity. I didn't find any. What I did encounter was unneeded evidence that Canada's wealthy and successful can be just as shallow and nasty as people of wealth from anywhere else in the world. I wasn't seeking, and sure didn't need that confirmation. Having money doesn't make a person an asshole, but people with money are often all too happy to demonstrate their proficiency at being assholes. It's a rule like Occam's Razor.

Although the Plebeian money-seekers come out smiling and hopeful, some cocky, most deluded, most amiable and eager to please, they are uniformly received by the "dragons" as the producers had told the panel off-camera that each entrepreneur had raped the dragons' mothers and ate the dragons' family pets, raw, on a baguette.

I realize the name of the show is the The Dragon's Den and not Petting Zoo or Cavalcade of Tickling and Cookies, so the panel is doing their best to appear and conduct themselves in a manner deemed by the CRTC as "dragon-like", but really, they're only acting like a gaggle of douche-bags I usually have the misfortune of standing behind in line at Starbucks; who berate a barista for fifteen minutes because their Pseudo-Double-Spritz-Half-Caf-Soy-Sprinkle-Pedanticcino, had 0.002 less sprinkles on it than the one they had on Bloor Street four months ago. And then they proceed to pay for the $17.47 drink with a debit card that won't swipe.

Rather than being a showcase of Canadian entrepreneurship and innovation and screw-ball-invention, The Dragon's Den is a venal pageant of cuntery and douche-baggery. Doing their best, feeble impressions of the socially retarded talking heads on their favorite business TV shows, the "dragons" are forever snarkily interrupting the Plebeian presenters with sarcastic questions, acerbic, humorless guffaws and an assortment of other rude, parliamentary grunts, huffs and groans. When they're not asking questions-- like "Did a stupid tree fall on you as a kid and puncture your brain with stupidness?" -- they're being outright insulting, simply saying the Plebeian presenter's idea sucks.

I'm all for blunt feedback. I'm all for the unvarnished truth. But the The Dragon's Den offers cliched vitriol, middle-school snark and a solid gold example of rich people in love with their money, in love with themselves, doing what they do best: conducting themselves as complete and utter fucksticks. The Dragon's Den is a bunch of angry millionaires; that group in society with which more ordinary, television-watching people can relate and empathize: My gosh, the responsibility and weight of being a person so great that you've actually swindled, insider-traded, and bullied to get. The weight of being so important! Right.

Hey, if you're loaded and you've got some putz hitting you up for money, turn him down. It's your money; that's your right. If the putz gets pushy, sure enough give him the executive brush-off. If the putz is nasty, tell him to fuck off. But all this angry millionaire bullshit, all of this hating others because they're not as rich or dynamic or cutthroat and sleazy as you are to make a fortune is about as entertaining as Amish porn.

Dragons, you're assholes. You've got money. Great. You've some heartwarming "rags to riches" stories. Wonderful. Too bad you forgot what it is to be human beings. By the time you pass from this world into the next, I hope some investment bank or mutual fund manager has figured a way to send your assets with you. Because, left to your charm, charity and humanity, you're fucked.

In the meantime, I'll look for you in the line at Starbucks and hope that you're all audited by Revenue Canada in 2009.