Wednesday, March 05, 2003

WHAT?!?! Will reality television PLEASE go away???

Yes, yet another reality television shows will be thrust on an already-exhausted, already-irritating market. This time around it's ABC's All American Girl. Apparently, the Miss America/Miss USA pageants are no longer adequate. They have to introduce a far more dangerous show--one whose short-sightedness not only narrowly defines female beauty, but pigeon-holes what it is to be American as well!

Lovely.

But to attack the All American Girl program alone isn't right. All reality television needs to go. It has long overstayed it's welcome. Are You Hot?: The Search for America's Sexiest People, Married By America... Come on.

At first, reality television was at least interesting. Well, not in the sense that it was intellectually engaging, but it at least satisfied curiosity at the upstart genre pioneered by MTV (The Real World; Road Rules) and--later--Mark Burnett of Survivor fame. But now? Cheap. Cheaper than cheap. It was always cheap, pandering to everyone's baser, inner voyeur (don't think people have inner voyeurs? why else do we care about what Michael Jackson does/doesn't do to his face? why else is Robert Downey Jr's struggles with substance abuse newsworthy?) But now?

Now it's valueless. Insulting.

So, PLEASE! Make it go away! Tune out reality television. Change the channel. Watch the news (providing it's not CNN, let that be your reality television!) Or turn the t.v. off entirely and, gasp!, read a newspaper or, better still!, a book!!! Please.

Make the reality television stop! Curls up in fetal position, and rocks back and forth while humming to self...

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