Reality Bites

As my first post on my shiny new blog I would like to address the Cultural train wreck known as "Reality TV" Inspired by My good friend Cha and her blog about the same. Well I'm in the stage of life where I'm about to enter old fogiehood so it's surely no surprise that I hate it. All of it from "Survivor" to "The Hills " and everything in between. My wife and daughter watch "the Bachelorette" and I absolutely can't stay in the same room when it's on. Luckily I can retreat to the man cave and drown my sorrows in Fox news or Mystery Science Theater DVDs. As you may know the latest version of MTV's "Real World" takes place in New Orleans and includes a female cast member from Philadelphia Ms. I'm sure my daughter will end up watching it and I can only imagine what kind of debauchery MTV will be promoting down in the big sleazy. But the other night on the Documentary channel I found a gem of a show called Kamp Katrina, which followed a couple living in the 9th ward immediately following Katrina who opened up there back yard to a group of homeless people. ( I'm pretty sure this bunch was already homeless before Katrina.) Of course we all know that no good deed ever goes unpunished so you can pretty much guess that everything didn't end all that well. Anyway I made a point to force my daughter to come in and watch with me at some of the key points, such as homeless woman who's been Beaten by someone so bad that the front portion of her skull is metal and she takes out her glass eye and let's a dirty old man play with it before popping it back in. And another part where the young expectant mother who's ""going straight for her baby"" gets beat up by the babydaddy and smokes a crack pipe just before having her baby 3 months pre-mature. So anyway I tell her that this is the Real "Real World New Orleans" and anything she sees on MTV or any other "reality show" has absolutely nothing to do with reality and everything to do with selling product and making a select few people rich. Did it make a difference? Did I get through to her ? Of course not. But maybe it provided some balance to the endless onslaught of fantasy that is "Reality TV."