As the Bloodhound Gang once said, “me and you baby ain’t nothing but mammals so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.”

Unfortunately for the gang, and for everyone else, the Discovery Channel ain’t doin’ it like they used to.

For the past decade, the Discovery Channel has made a slow but steady progression away from its educational and documentary-based background towards the reality TV drivel that squirms around all of the other channels of our televisions.

No longer can one ponder the mating habits of the Komodo dragon over dinner. Instead, all of the prime time air has been filled with fat mustached men arguing over cars, or crabs or trees or any number of things they must catch, destroy or harvest.

From the beginning, the Discovery Channel stood out among the rest as television that was not only entertaining but educational and enlightening. Conservation and preservation seemed to be the top priorities in all of the programming.

Today if one were to tune in they would never be informed about any of the ecological damage that is being done for their entertainment, and our gluttonous industries.

A new show called “Swords” documents the lives and jobs of fishermen who hunt swordfish. Of course, at no point in the show do they mention the fish’s specific importance as an apex predator in the food chain or its place on the Greenpeace International Seafood Red-list.

Other shows such as “Swamp Loggers,” “Ice Road Truckers,” and “License to Drill” all highlight and romanticize unsustainable and environmentally hazardous industries.

The question that arises from all of this is: What went wrong? Why did the Discovery Channel change from an educational tool to a mindless entertainment behemoth?

The only rational explanation is the network has been purchased by the Tea Party and is now being used as a propaganda machine.

A channel that glorifies drilling for oil, cutting down trees and blowing things up could only be run by the Republicans’ creepy cousins.

I am pretty sure I even saw a “Bachmann/Romney 2012” campaign sticker on a great white shark during the “Jaws Revisited” special.

All kidding aside, all channels must make money and capture an audience’s attention, yet the Discovery Channel needs to be conscious of their specific influence on their viewers.

The channel is viewed by many as not just as entertainment, but as an educational device. Every time someone sees reality television being shown and takes it as fact, a little bubble of ignorance emerges in the populace.