I really am a curmudgeon

We just sat and watched tonight's episode of Extreme Makeover Home Edition. Here's the premise: a family in dire need, unable to make their home work to fulfill said need, has ABC and TV stud Ty Pennington redo it for them. A nice, charitable, concept. And, for the puposes of televison, ABC naturally goes way over the top. The end is always a tear-jerker, as the family gets way more than they could have imagined.

Tonight featured a family with a little handicapped 5-year-old boy. The child was a delight, but he was unable to negotiate around the 100-year-old farm house in which they lived. For me, this is fine. These people need help, and ABC put together a crew of local contractors to build them a brand new home in seven days! Quite a feat.

But here is where I called "bullcrap!" Before building the new, handicapped-friendly home, they tore down the existing, perfectly good home. My contention is that if they can pull together 1000 people to build a new home, they could have put the cost of demolition toward the purchase of a new site. Then, they could have given the old home to another family that needed it.

I say, build the family a new home, but save the old one for somebody else.