There’s no appetite for watching junk sports

Does a TV news segment or a story in your morning newspaper ever make you gag?

I don’t mean because it is too violent. I don’t mean a TV program that warns you it contains “disturbing images” or that the article you are reading includes graphic and grisly details about a death.

I mean sickening -- a story so disgusting your stomach can take only so much.

Could somebody please, please, please, I beg you, put a stop to all this news coverage of that totally repulsive 4th of July hot dog-eating contest?

This thing is being rammed down our throats on a daily basis. Not only the “traditional” holiday stomach-stuffer but a steady diet of regional events leading to it that we are being distastefully force-fed.

A celebrity has been made of Takeru Kobayashi, a 29-year-old with a garbage disposal for an esophagus. He is a six-time winner of a contest on Coney Island to see who can cram the greatest number of hot dogs down his or her frankfurter hole.

ESPN televised it Wednesday for a full hour. It is now officially your go-to network for spelling bees, poker players and grotesque gluttons taking part in “competitive eating.”

Sports pages coast-to-coast have featured Kobayashi as if he were a championship athlete. TV news segments again and again have shown him gorge and chew with little bits of food spewing out of his mouth -- that’s entertainment.

America Online profiled the contestants, complete with photographs of them with food smeared all over their faces.

There was Joey Chestnut, who “broke the old record” of Kobayashi by masticating 59 dogs in 12 minutes time.

There was Sonya Thomas, a 105-pound woman who held the “American record” of 37 dogs before Chestnut broke it.

There was also a smorgasbord of “other” food swallowers like Ed “Cookie” Jarvis, who ate 4 pounds of crinkled French fries in six minutes, and Tim Janus, whom AOL described as the “world record-holder in tiramisu consumption” as well as “one of the sport’s up and coming stars.”

Let me tell you what’s up and coming, “sports” fans: lunch.

This is not a cute blueberry pie-eating contest from a rural state fair. This is a full-scale competition, nationally televised and as heavily promoted as Wimbledon, which glorifies a freak show. A “sport” that tests the limits of who will become physically ill first, the “athletes” or the audience.

Our gag reflexes haven’t been tested this way since NBC ran a tasteless, gut-churning, vermin-devouring weekly series called “Fear Factor” and aired commercials for it while some of us happened to be in the middle of dinner.

We now endure TV film footage of Kobayashi and his cronies as they smash mounds of food into their lips and teeth.

I would love it if a commercial were to follow that depicts a starving child from a third-world nation who desperately needs your help.

There were reports of a jaw injury “suffered” by the great Kobayashi that could potentially hamper his performance.

I haven’t rooted this hard to have a man’s mouth permanently wired shut since Mike Tyson.

Some people go to boxing matches to see the blood. Some people go to auto races to see a crash. I hesitate to think why people would go to a hot dog-eating contest. To see what, the belches? The barfs?

“How was the contest?”

“Cool. I got to see a guy’s stomach pumped.”

This is the first so-called sporting event that makes me cringe, and don’t forget, I have seen the Detroit Lions play football.

I wish Kobayashi, Chestnut or one of these guys would explode like that gastronome from Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life” who eats one morsel too many.

They say horse racing is inhumane. They say pro wrestlers do great harm to their bodies for entertainment’s sake. Hey, at least an actual trained skill is involved. A wild pit bull could bite into a pile of hot dogs. A 6-year-old kid could.

Someday, one will. A parent will go into a kitchen to find a bunch of first-graders vying to see which one can stuff the most Oscar Mayers into his mouth.

“What are you doing?” Mommy can scream as she dials 911.

“I saw it on ESPN,” her choking kid can say.

We need to stop treating this carnival of sideshow weirdos as if it is cute.

Chestnut, 23, was the winner of Wednesday’s nauseating competition in New York. He didn’t choke under pressure. He devoured 66 dogs to Kobayashi’s 63.

The victorious college student from San Jose State was wrapped in an American flag when it was over. He told the TV audience how proud he was to have Kobayashi’s crown “come back to the U.S. on the 4th of July.”

Here’s an independent thought I just had: Go stuff yourself.

If I wanted to watch uncivilized creatures eat, I would go to a zoo. Get out of my face.

T.J. Simers has the day off.