Not since the days of the travelling carnival have people been exploited so shamelessly for the purpose of entertainment. While once there was a time when TLC stood for The Learning Channel and treated viewers to quality educational programming, it has since taken a deliberate nosedive and become the most unscrupulously amusing channel on television. If there’s a line that TLC won’t cross, we don’t know what it is.

Here are some highlights of TLC’s recent offerings.

Toddlers and Tiaras

The Premise
Follow families with inferiority complexes in their quest for fame, fortune and misguided self-respect in the totally un-creepy world of children’s beauty pageants.

Why it’s Horrifying
The sexualization of girls under the age of 6 will make you long for the days when Dina Lohan and Lynne Spears were America’s most exploitative Moms.

Why it’s Hilarious
Frumpy, poorly dressed mothers with obvious self-esteem issues dance and gyrate to encourage kids, while the spray-tanned, big-haired children stand on stage watching helplessly.

Jon and Kate Plus 8/Kate Plus 8

The Premise
Follow the Gosselin family as they tackle life’s challenges with a litter of adorable children.

Why it’s Horrifying
8 young kids vie for individual attention as their parents’ marriage dissolves in front of their eyes (and on film).

Why it’s Hilarious
Watch Octodad struggle to retain a shred of manhood in the face of his soon-to-be-ex wife’s demeaning barbs.

Your Kid Ate What?

The Premise
Scare the hell out of parents by regaling them with tales of children eating leaky batteries and rat poison.

Why it’s Horrifying
The show is made up of real, genuinely frightening incidents that could have resulted in the deaths of young children.

Why it’s Hilarious
It’s like watching the preschool edition of Jackass.

18/19 Kids and Counting

The Premise
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar raise an army of narrow-minded, alarmingly polite, and well-behaved children.

Why it’s Horrifying
As innocent children die in orphanages every day, this woman keeps popping them out like a human pez dispenser.

Why it’s Hilarious
Watch kids who have been taught that normal human interaction is bad attempt to have romantic relationships. (Hell is filled with couples that kissed before the wedding night.)

My Monkey Baby

The Premise
Get an inside look into the lives of people who raise monkeys as children (known as “Monkids”).

Why it’s Horrifying
Examines how people resort to animal abuse in order to relieve their desperate loneliness.

Why it’s Hilarious
Because nothing says batshit crazy quite like putting makeup on a monkey then having it be a bridesmaid at your wedding.

Questionable content aside, at least we know that sensitivity to serious issues is always at the forefront of TLC programming. In fact, they frequently feature shows about people suffering from serious, debilitating, and potentially life-threatening medical conditions. Titles include:
The Man Whose Arms Exploded
The Woman with Giant Legs
The Boy with a New Head
The Woman with Half a Body
650-lb Virgin

Way to keep it classy TLC. Way to keep it classy.

(Author’s note: I have every intention of watching the monkey show.)