Free Republic

To put it concisely: The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills are sustaining the illusion of propriety, the Real Housewives of New York are abandoning it. “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” and “The Real Housewives of New York City” air one day apart. As the spring unfolds, this proximity is creating a contrast that illuminates the two basic categories of a “Real Housewives” franchise. It’s all about opposing tensions. For the Beverly Hills housewives, the central tension is between the illusion of propriety and the women’s varying abilities to maintain it. Even Denise Richards and Erika Girardi, both of whom...

Remember when the TV show Leave it to Beaver was the height of pop culture entertainment? About a nice family of four with good values? How far we’ve sunk since then. Now Americans watch all kinds of trashy shows and movies instead. Reality shows like Keeping up with the Kardashians portray a family with loose moral values who are famous only because one of the daughters made a sex tape and has an enormous behind. Yet millions of viewers watch this vapid family, who are not trained actors, regularly. It debuted in 2007 and is still going, as one of...

Bill Loud was not the first person to play the role of a father on television. What made him a pioneer was that he was not acting — and that he was often not acting responsibly. In 1973, when PBS broadcast “An American Family,” Mr. Loud, who died on Thursday in Los Angeles at 97, was the tan and philandering head of an affluent real-life household whose domestic dramas in Santa Barbara, Calif., were captured on camera for 300 hours and edited into 12 hourlong episodes now regarded as the genesis of reality television. “An American Family” shocked American families....

TONTITOWN, AR, July 16, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) -- TV's biggest family is officially off the air.Two months after TLC suspended "19 Kids and Counting," the network has formally cancelled its biggest show. "TLC and the Duggar family have decided to not move forward with '19 Kids and Counting,'" the channel told The Associated Press. "The show will no longer appear on the air."According to the Duggars, there are no hard feelings. "Years ago, when we were asked to film our first one hour documentary about the logistics of raising 14 children, we felt that it was an opportunity to share with...

Someday, we’ll recall these as the days of struggle, comrades, in pursuit of redistribution of heritage. After all, why should the Irish get all the blarney, or the Italians all the pasta? And don’t even get me started on the Swiss. On the other hand, if Rachel Dolezal’s motivation came from a deep-seated need to appropriate the claimed victimhood of others, maybe she no longer needs to fake her ethnicity any longer, since she’s become almost universally rejected for her own fakery. Spokane’s city council unanimously decided to end Dolezal’s association with the city, although the action comes in response...

One day in 1977, about a year after Bruce Jenner shattered a world record to win the decathlon gold medal at the Montreal Summer Olympics, he met up with his sportswriter friend Barry McDermott to play tennis in New York City. McDermott suggested a match at his private club — but that wasn’t Jenner’s style. Privacy was never his priority. The pair went to Central Park, where word quickly spread that Bruce Jenner (Bruce Jenner!) was playing on the public courts. McDermott remembers the crowd growing, as he had known it would, gawkers pressed against the chain-link fence, watching the...

Running a news and an opinion website in the age of Obama can some times be a bleak task, simply by the sheer tonnage of sewage this administration and this culture are belching out. After monitoring this mess intensely I’ve come to the conclusion that If God doesn’t smack us then he’s definitely going to have to say sorry to Sodom and Gomorrah. Yep, reporting and writing on the sludge we’re all crawling around in can be a downer. The other day my wife told me to lighten up because I was starting to make Eddie Vedder sound like a...

CBS finally apologized Sunday night one week after the television show “Amazing Race” broadcast what critics called an “anti-American” segment that offended Vietnam War veterans. “We want to apologize to veterans – particularly those who served in Vietnam – as well as to their families and any viewers who were offended by the broadcast,” said host Phil Keoghan in a statement at the beginning of Sunday’s night’s episode. “All of us here have the most profound respect for the men and women who fight for our country.” The episode caused widespread outrage among war veterans. James Koutz, the national commander...

Lifetime's Dance Moms has hit new lows by asking its child contestants - the youngest of whom is just eight-years-old - to dress in nude bikinis and perform a burlesque routine on stage. The raunchy dance moves are usually the domain of striptease experts, the X-rated acts brimming with nudity, nipple tassels and sexually explicit poses. But a clip from this week's show sees dance teacher Abby Lee Miller dressing the children in tan bikinis to give the audience the impression of full nudity, before asking them to act as if a man 'cant' afford' them.

SARAH PALIN'S ALASKA PREMIERE! (PREVIEW HERE)

Octomom™ has reportedly developed a thing for Jon Gosselin (eww) and after catching wind of this the money-grubbing star decided to sign up for a new reality series in which he’ll court the mother of 14. "I heard that Nadya has an insatiable desire to spend time with Jon and to put their families together," onetime Cheaters producer Bobby Goldstein told In Touch Weekly. "And I had the idea that this could be a very entertaining fiasco." The pilot will allegedly be titled Jon - Kate = Jon + Octomom, and will monitor Jon "as he contemplates what hooking up...

MOBILE, Ala. -- Action movie star Steven Seagal is best known in these parts for having played the cook who thwarted a terrorist plot in the 1992 thriller "Under Siege," which was filmed here aboard the battleship USS Alabama. But these days he has another assignment. For almost 20 years, Seagal has been working as a fully commissioned reserve deputy with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office in Louisiana. His law enforcement work is chronicled in a "Steven Seagal Lawman," an upcoming A&E reality TV show that will premiere on the cable channel at 9 p.m. CST Dec. 2. A&E is...