Come one, come all, to the extravaganza of evil! Behold the tableau of terror, the pageant of panic, the sordid spectacle of screams! Witness the excesses of bloodthirsty historians! Murder is their profession, mayhem their hobby! Children admitted free!

So the other day I was watching a program on the History Channel about royal scandals, old and new. The segment I caught was about Marie Antoinette, "Ms. Let-them-eat-cake" herself. Anyway, the narrative culminated in one of the channel's typical dramatic re-enactments, in which we were shown Marie being prepared for her execution. We saw her in prison, saw her getting her hair cut for the final time, and then we saw her being slowly led to the scaffolding, a white linen gown billowing out around her as if she were the tragic heroine of a Tennyson poem. It was pretty eerie and cool. Next, we saw her head being placed in the guillotine, and I found myself beginning to shift uncomfortably in my seat. How much would they show? I wondered. After all, the guillotine is a particularly nasty way to go.

The device itself always reminds me of two things: 1) Madame Defarge in A Tale of Two Cities, perversely working away with her knitting needles while head after head is lopped into the basket, and 2) a weird film about the Rapture that I was forced to watch in youth group long ago. The latter included several beheadings and featured some of the most appalling special effects I've ever seen. Seriously, they made Clash of the Titans look like a Kubrick film. But that's neither here nor there. The point is, the final few seconds of Marie Antoinette's life were grisly in the extreme, and I have no interest in seeing a graphic representation of this event. I mean, there's a reason Mr. Peabody never brought Sherman in the Waybac machine to see it.

I'll end the suspense right now—luckily, the program in question did not simulate the exact moment Marie Antoinette's head was severed from her body. What we did get, however, was repeated shots of the gore-covered blade falling, repeated shots of blood spattering on the executioner's shirt, and repeated shots of blood pooling down on the scaffolding, dripping down the stairs, etc. Seriously, for about five minutes, it was one big fiesta of blood. I was so surprised that I began to laugh out loud (I'm sure this annoyed my fellow gym enthusiasts, but I honestly couldn't help it).

Now let me clarify for a moment. As most of you have figured out, I have fairly morbid sensibilities. I enjoy the frisson of harmless (read: fictional) violence, and I love everything everything on the spectrum from Edgar Allan Poe to Rob Zombie. But in this context, I couldn't help feeling a little weird watching the blood spatters darken the executioner's sleeve over and over again. You see, I've always regarded the History Channel as kind of a neverending class filmstrip, but one that doesn't require me to take notes for a quiz next period. There's this calm, didactic quality to it that instills confidence and makes you feel like you're making good use of your time. But with this weird Marie Antoinette bloodbath, it was like I started dozing off in the middle of the filmstrip and then everything turned dark and creepy and Freddy Krueger showed up and it was just bad mojo, all around.

What's up with this, you may ask? When did our venerable History Channel become a purveyor of cheap thrills? One explanation is that it was sweeps week and the violence factor was amped up accordingly. Could be. But I think it more likely that our current crop of historians, who have always had a reputations as a mild-mannered lot, are just now beginning to bare their fangs at an unsuspecting nation. They are shuffling off their mundane coils and embarking on a new world of sensationalism. I think it's only a matter of time before the History Channel becomes known by its sub rosa moniker, "Channel of a Thousand Corpses." And with a title like that, they could take over the world.

Not that that's what they're planning. But seriously. Keep your eyes open.