I hate reality television. There, I said it. More than anything, I hate the fact that people on reality television shows will do anything for their 15 minutes of fame. More often than not, manufactured tension between two people united in their goal to get their face in the tabloids passes for drama on reality TV shows.

Once in a while, however, something happens on a reality TV show that actually carries genuine weight, be it comedic, dramatic or otherwise. Usually it involves someone actually displaying some semblance of a conscience or doing something that a kindhearted person would do. These events are rare. Other times, though, there are different reasons to tune into a reality show. The goings-on at American Idol (my least favorite of all reality shows) fall into this latter category.

His name is Sanjaya Malakar, and he can't sing his way out of a tuba. He is the antithesis of any definition of a good singer. He's full of himself, Simon Cowell hates him, Randy Jackson just shrugs, and Paula Abdul struggles to find nice things to say about him. In short, he's the perfect candidate to put an end to reality TV as we know it.

I don't watch American Idol, nor have I ever had the urge to, but Malakar might make me give the show a look. He's the kind of unifying, awful anti-star that reality TV has been waiting for. He's cocky, arrogant, thinks very highly of his talents as a singer, and best of all, isn't in on the joke.

The joke that I'm referring to, of course, is the fact that Malakar is only still on the show thanks to sites like VoteForTheWorst.com and a healthy dose of publicity from Howard Stern. Malakar thinks he's the best singer in the world, and I suspect that watching him come crashing down to earth would be a guilty pleasure for most of the viewing world.

But Malakar can't come crashing down, at least not until he wins. If he indeed does pull it off, a referendum of sorts will have been passed on reality TV as a whole. The American people, the voters who choose between these wannabe stars, will have had their say on reality TV if Malakar wins. They'll have said that they're sick of it, that it's a ridiculous fad gone completely off the charts (in a bad way), and that it's time to bring down the final curtain on the craze.

This should have happened a long time ago. Reality TV ran its course after about the third or fourth Survivor, yet there were apparently enough mindless drones in the viewing public to green-light a number of new shows, including Man Vs. Beast, Pros Vs. Joes, So You Think You Can Dance? and so on.

Add those shows in with the content MTV and VH1 are producing, and you have a recipe for disaster, though I'll admit that Flavor of Love had its share of perversely entertaining moments.

To put it mildly, the quality of the programming was suffering.

At least now people are coming to their senses and striking back at reality TV and all those who hold it dear. The people that are full of righteous indignation at the Malakar saga are precisely the people who need to be ridiculed. These are the people who have kept this tired idea going for so long. Surely most of the country has to be sick of people stabbing each other in the back and acting despicably just so they can say they were famous for a few months and then fade into obscurity, at least until their sex tape gets leaked.

I hope that the Malakar story is only the first of many assaults on the "legitimacy" of reality TV.

The genre as a whole has becoming nothing more than a parody of itself, a disease in need of a cure, and an era of modern entertainment programming that needs to be forgotten, buried, and never spoken about again.

This is only the start.

Take this column as a call for an end to reality programming as we know it, and a plea to leave the acting to the actors, and not to the guy next door who felt like applying for a show at the mall.

I can't take it any more, the stupidity and lack of creativity is killing me.

We can keep COPS though, because if I'm going to have to put up with reality TV, there'd better be heavy doses of Budweiser, wife beaters and mullets.

After all, no reality TV show could ever be more entertaining than that.