Filth pays

The last couple of days there's been a lot of talk about the kid who stars on Two and a Half Men and his statements regarding his new Christian faith and its effect on how he sees the show.  I can't comment on the kids' faith, of which I know nothing, or the content of the show, which I've never watched.  One thing that's jumped out at me, though, is how much he apparently gets paid for the show he now describes as "filth".


According to several sources, he makes $350,000 per episode.  Most American sitcoms air 26 episodes a season, so that comes out to over $9 million a year, before taxes.  That's a frankly unimaginable amount of money, from where I'm standing.

To put that money in terms I can actually grasp, let's compare it to my income as an inventory clerk at a small factory in Alabama.  I make roughly $12/hour, which comes out to about $25,000 a year.  Add to that rental income and occasional preaching, and my family's pre-tax income is $35,000 a year, more or less.  Not a lot in modern America, but enough to live comfortably, and more importantly to allow my wife to stay home and take care of our two daughters and one infant nephew.

Look at the math, though.  The young man in question makes, per episode, as much as I can bring home in ten years.  I would have to work for almost 260 years to make his annual salary.  There's only one conclusion I can draw from this:  inventory clerks are deeply undervalued.

I didn't go through this little exercise to feel bad about my income, though, or to complain about his.  I don't begrudge the kid what he makes, though I do question the fact that so many people seem to think that his work is worth that.  I know that the show is a huge money-maker for CBS, but that just pushes the question back a notch.  Why does it make so much money?  Because advertisers are willing to pay that much.  But why?  Because people want to see it.

And there's the rub.  The reason this kid can make what is obviously a ludicrous amount of money is that people want to watch the show he describes as "filth".  They can't get enough of it, in the same way that they can't get enough trashy "reality" TV and celebrity gossip.  There's a deep hunger for immorality in the world, and people who are willing to feed that hunger know that they can live like kings.  To put it bluntly, sin sells and pretty much everyone is buying.

Amazing that this happens in a "Christian nation", isn't it?  In a country that trumpets its morality and goodness, a kid barely old enough to shave can make millions of dollars a year acting in a trashy comedy show that apparently celebrates the very things God has condemned.

I hope the kid's conversion is real, and that he leaves the show, regardless of the consequences.  I hope that this isn't some sort of cynical viral marketing scam, and that in some way it makes people consider the Gospel a little more closely ... especially those who already claim to believe it.  I hope that it becomes a little harder to make a killing selling "filth" to people who should know better than to buy it.