Who’s Reality is THIS?
While visiting Family in Madison over Easter break, I enjoyed an excellent dinner and intelligent conversation with two of my closest friends. We shared intimate details about our lives, our men, children, careers, and even talked a little about shopping and hairstyles. We chatted for two hours, and were really getting into the thick of it, when Anne said, “Oh I should have recorded Idol tonight ~ it’s on right now!”
Sandy chimed in, “I’m recording it, you can come over and watch it!”
I was incredulous. I’m not a snob, but I couldn’t believe what I heard. Sandy and Anne were hooked on American Idol! I watched three minutes of that show about two years ago and quickly changed the channel. So I had nothing to say while Sandy and Anne discussed Idol details; who they thought would win and why; how pretty some girl was, but her hair was funky; and how that one guy didn’t really sing that great.
In my opinion, American Idol is the mother of all lame, ridiculous so-called Reality TV shows, and even if 100 million Americans watch it, that doesn’t make it good TV. It’s embarassing, really. All those shows could be lumped under one heading: What People Will do for Money and Ten Minutes of Notoriety.
The original reality TV show that I enjoyed as a youngster was Candid Camera. Now THAT was good TV! Clean, humorous, respectful even in the midst of a trick, good for an honest laugh out loud any day. And remember Art Linkletter and his wonderful interviews of children? He got them to say the most hilarious things, while he showed respect for them as individuals. No one ratted on another person, used profanity, lied or cheated to get something, or made lewd gestures at the camera. No one had to eat worms, crawl around in dog shit, or be covered by spiders and snakes.
Today’s reality TV is just garbage masquerading as prime time fare. I respect anyone’s right to watch it, but I don’t have to jump on the bandwagon. I’ll just go read my book now.
posted by Betsy at 12:05 PM
3 Comments:
Busted! I watched American Idol, pretty faithfully, for a couple of seasons. I eschewed all the others; no Joe Millionaire, no Fear Factor, no Amazing Race for this chica. This year, I never got on the Idol bandwagon. Too busy BLOGGING to watch much TV these days. I'm certain the writing is much better for my character development, too.
Amazing how you can know somebody for 25 years and still discover dirty little secrets. Pretty cool, huh?
I'm with you, sistah! I boycott any brand of reality teeVEE - there are way too many people that got put out of work - writers, crew, costume, make-up, set, actors, directors, etc...because networks found a formula that would guarantee ratings while costing them practically nothing -because there will always be someone, somewhere, willing to do ANYTHING for free, no matter how humiliating, whether or not they are pimping out their children to eat cockroaches in front of millions - for a chance at being on the teeVEE. Idol is one of them - at least when Ed McMahon did Star Search it wasn't deliberately cruel. I see no value in schadenfruede.
Here's a meme for you, dearest. It'll get you writing!
http://goddem.blogspot.com/2005/06/break-chain.html
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