THE HOLY GRAIL OF AMERICAN LIFE…FAME
THE REALITIES OF REALITY TV vs. REAL WORLD ISSUES

By Gigi

There’s something inherently wrong with our present culture when seemingly intelligent people are prepared to do insane and desperate acts to garner this vacuous honor; and the ones who already have it will do anything to retain it, including becoming attention starved media whores. I’m talking about fame. And they don’t have to pay for it in sweat to attain it. When did unscripted reality shows replace quality prime-time programming? And I must admit, albeit sick of the many talk shows and game shows that once glutted TV, when did reality shows replace them?

You have publicists becoming actors, actors becoming governors and rappers becoming actors—there won’t be any room left for the real professionals. Our nation is in disarray from corporate corruption, the U.S. is at war with Iraq, unemployment spiked post 9/11, our schools are in shambles and we’re raising future morons due to the mis-education of our children; we have pedophile priests running loose, quality of life and gratuitous crime has increased, HIV and AIDS is on the rise within the Black community,especially among Black women… and yet, reality shows is ruling television . I can go on, but you get what I am saying here.

People are tuning in each week to see who gets voted off, booted out, or fired on: The Apprentice, American Idol, America’s Top Model, Survivor and Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire, to name a few. And the unlucky ones who are unceremoniously ask to leave, are resurrected to appear on other reality shows, TV shows, movies and commercials—anything to prolong their 15 minutes.

Desperate for recognition and ugly grabs for power, these greedy, shallow and insecure former contestants will shamelessly promote themselves at any and ALL costs to remain in front of the camera, and we buy into it. Are we so starved for entertainment that we accept any dreck the networks churn out for ratings? Are we all in dire need of mindless distractions and other D-list celebrity nonsense, because we cannot bear to think about what is really going on in the real world? Well, behaving like an ostrich won’t make it go away. And just as Nero played the violin while Rome burned, we watch MTV, while America quickly becomes a third world nation, with uneducated children who cannot read, write or execute simple mathematic problems; and meanwhile, we have North Korea (potentially more dangerous than the mess in Iraq) reprocessing enough plutonium to make an additional half-dozen long range nuclear weapons, to cook half the world, yet we are instead inundated with cooking reality shows like, The Restaurant.

We as Americans need to re-focus and to re-commit ourselves; we need to put our energies where it’s needed most, towards our atrophied future: our children, our family, our country, and our values, before we further deteriorate and fade from reality.

Because although tentative for the present, the dissolution of the Unites States is not so far-fetched…look at what happened to Russia. It’s time to wake up!