Someone please fix me a Bloody Mary to help with this hangover.
I mean, I've been dealing with the overflow of the rest of this country's intoxication and its indulgence. No, I'm not talking about alcohol.
I'm talking about "reality" TV.
Please, dear God, forbid that we not know who Tristanella-whoever she is, is sleeping with this week.
Oh great, another moron woman making the rest of my gender look pathetic, all the while reiterating the stereotypes that surround it day in and day out.
"What?! I was cut from Joe Millionaire? But what if he was 'the one'?"
At least once a day, I walk into a room to hear the discussion about someone's dose of "reality" TV the previous night.
In our country, people are drinking -- no wait -- chugging this concoction, and the buzz is hard to avoid.
Let's look a little further back, to the times of Candid Camera, America's Funniest Home Videos and even the first season of MTV's The Real World.
What was different about those first reality TV shows is that they were not a separate culture.
These shows took glimpses of life and showed America how funny it could be.
All right, let's go even further back to the times of The Brady Bunch, Leave it to Beaver and the like. Now, of course, we all know those weren't really reality TV shows, but I think the point behind them was to give America what it was supposed to believe was reality.
The problem I have with today's reality TV shows is that they do not show reality in the least. The producers of almost every network want you all to believe that it is and they've got almost everyone fooled.
No one is going to tell me that a guy can pick from 25 different beautiful women, on camera, and find "the one." It's ridiculous. How can a person truly get to know the "woman of his dreams" when there are 24 others competing for his attention? Please, let me grovel at some guy's feet. Pick me! "Not until you pick up the coal from the coal mines."
Oh, then let's take MTV's The Real World, season 12,797,573, or whatever they are on now. Yes, "Seven gorgeous 20-something strangers picked to live in a casino in Las Vegas ..." Real world my ass!
They are given jobs -- easy, easy, glamourous jobs, and we watch as the cameras roll.
Typical interview questions:
"Do you like sex?" Check. "Do you like sex with more than one person in a week?" Check. "Orgy?" Check.
There we have it kids, the real world.
All my roommates and I do is have sex, scream at each other, complain endlessly about our simple jobs and play with each other's heads. My life is just like The Real World. Isn't yours?
What bothers me most is that we have become a new generation of people more interested in who's sleeping with whom on TV than what matters most in life.
We are hooked, almost intravenously, to this drug that feeds us, blocking our minds from the important stuff. The stuff of Iraq and North Korea, of weapon inspections and the hunger that 35,000 children die from each day.
But in this country, it's all about making money. The buying and selling of people, sex and conflict. It's a business all about money and reality TV is making a lot of it.
Speaking of money, "Do you take American Express, Mr. Bartender? I need another Bloody Mary."
