Who The H*LL is Kim Kardashian & Why Do I Care??

Maybe I’m not particularly “with it” (wait…who am I kidding…I’m definitely not “with it”), but anyway I just don’t get it. I watch my share of “reality” TV – I love watching Project Runway and The Next Food Network Star and Iron Chef America and Chopped. I guess it’s my competitive nature. And (to me at least) there’s point to those kinds of programs. (Most of them make me hungry, but I’m not sure that’s the producers' objective…then again, maybe it is.)

I don’t include “vote me out of the house/off the island” types of programs…because I think those are just cruel and stupid. But I am absolutely dumbfounded that people would actually watch programs about Jersey girls who are bitchy and spoiled or about rich sisters and their family squabbles or women who are willing to prostitute themselves to wind up with a flower at the end of an episode.

Other than shopping, fighting, applying (too much) makeup, dressing up in slutty clothes, partying or swabbing tonsils with a stranger, what do they really DO?? And why do people find this interesting?? (In current "text-ese" WTH???)

It would be different if people like Snooki (what kind of idiotic name is that anyway??) went around donating to children’s hospitals or spent time reading to the blind or handing out trophies at Special Olympics games or organizing food bank drives…that type of activity would be worthwhile and worth our attention. But what did she…or Paris Hilton or Kim Kolciak (I didn’t know who she was either – Real Housewives of Atlanta) or Tori & Dean or Jessica & Nick (yes, I know they broke up...weren't you just devastated???) or any of a multitude of other current “celebrities” really, really do to merit such fame and press exposure?

Hmm…well, I suppose it’s because they’re all willing to expose themselves…every unpleasant, petty, banal aspect of their shallow lives to a nation-wide audience. They say everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame, but unless you’re terminally narcissistic, that’s a tough way of achieving it.

Maybe I don’t have enough time on my hands…or perhaps I have too much, but either way I can’t see spending the hours and hours a week it would take to keep up with people like that.

Now I know that there are people who are passionate (notice that I didn't say "obsessed") about their favorite reality show…and that’s fine, and I suppose there are reasons to get emotionally invested in this season’s latest Idol or who dropped the most poundage this week or who remembered the lyrics to Michael Jackson’s “Pretty Young Thing” last night. Basically they are glorified game shows and it’s nice that people get a chance to do that.

But when you stick a camera (or a multitude of cameras) in somebody’s over-priced, over-decorated house and record the day-to-day doings of people who do nothing to contribute to society except broadcast their indecorous and unseemly behavior, that’s when my remote goes CLICK! and I go find something – anything! – else to do.

If that’s reality I’d rather live in Fantasy Land.


For now,
Nedra