Chuck Barris, game-show producer and occasional murderer, realized like P.T. Barnum before him (and reality shows after) that there was money to be made off the marginal, the quasi-talented, the damaged and the freakish. But I doubt even Barris could have predicted that during his lifetime the sideshow tent would be relocated to the center ring, that the audience would commandeer the dance floor. The defeat of professionalism is the cost of new technologies decentralizing the media, a price that seems high but one we should be willing to pay to live in a more egalitarian world, for everyone to have access. From the Reuters obituary of Eugene Patton, a.k.a. Gene Gene the Dancing Machine. An excerpt:

Eugene Patton, the stage hand who earned fame as “Gene Gene The Dancing Machine” on the quirky talent romp The Gong Show, has died at the age of 82 after suffering from diabetes, his family said.

At what were supposed to be spontaneous moments in the show launched in the 1970s that celebrated offbeat and sometimes awful acts, Count Basie’s upbeat “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” would blast out and host Chuck Barris would bellow out “Gene Gene the Dancing Machine,” setting the stage for Patton.

The stage hand, usually wearing a green windbreaker, painter’s hat and bell bottom pants, would dance his way on to stage, show off his moves and ignore a volley of items thrown his way ranging from clothing to rubber fish.

Barris, the show’s B-List celebrity judges and the audience would usually join along in dance.•