September 1, 2010 6:32 AM

A truly bad idea whose time has definitely not come

They’re doing a new show: Celebrity Corpse, where you dig up someone after five years and try to guess who they were.

  • Paul Merton

It should come as no surprise that I’m not a fan of “reality” television. That there’s nothing “real” about this genre is hardly breaking news. From what I’ve been able to determine, reality TV is merely a thinly-veiled excuse for television networks to save money by dispensing with inconvenient and costly script writers. The shows may lack scripts in the conventional sense, but producers manipulate results and create story lines and conflict for dramatic effect. Personalities with no discernible acting talent become stars, and a generation of Americans has become hooked. So why am I so upset about this?

The problem with reality shows is that they’re a lot like heroin. After a time, it takes ever-increasing amounts of the drug in order to achieve the same high. Situations become ever more ridiculous, conflict more unreasonable, and “characters” more caricature than human. Then you have the problem presented by one of the latest ideas, which follows American ordinance disposal technicians in a war zone. It may not be “Survivor: Afghanistan”…this is much more serious, and far more real and deadly. Reality TV is now exiting the domicile of the ridiculous for the realm of the sublime, using American service personnel and the risks they incur to drive ratings.

The US Navy has green-lighted the project, seeing it as an effective (and cheap) recruiting tool. What seems lost in all of this is that American troops legitimately in harm’s way are being used for entertainment value. And what happens when an ordinance disposal technician is wounded…or worse, killed? Since when are the lives of our sons and daughters to be used for the entertainment and edification of Americans comfortably ensconced on their couches?

What’s next? Televised executions? Real-time police SWAT operations? How long before someone in some cable network’s programming department realizes that there’s a market for real, unscripted bloodshed? Somehow, someone in a position of authority at G4 needs to rediscover his or her moral center and put a stop to this abomination. Regardless of whatever entertainment value might seem inherent in things going “BOOM!”, American service personnel should not be used for entertainment value. They deserve better…and so do we.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on September 1, 2010 6:32 AM.

There's ignorant. There's brain-dead. Then there's whatever the Hell this is.... was the previous entry in this blog.

Today's Wasilla Hillbillies update...verily, for the Apocalypse may already be upon us is the next entry in this blog.

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