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I’ve watched American Idol occasionally and a hand full of episodes of other so called “reality shows” and I’ve laughed at some of it, however most of these shows make me sick. But just like driving by a horrific auto accident, it is so compelling to slow down trying to catch a glimpse of the carnage, hoping to see some bloody bodies or severed limbs. Of course this compulsion is at the lowest end of the human nature spectrum.

Yea, watching obviously diluted bad singers try to convince the judges they are good and watching the judges insult them is funny in the same way watching someone slip on a banana peel or a guy take a hit to the crotch is funny. I think medical science has identified this part of our brain as the “13-Year-Old-Boy Locker Room Humor Lobe”.

The overriding theme of most of these reality shows, from American Idol and Project Runway, The Simple Life and the Real World, What Not to Wear and The Apprentice and on and on, is to say that for one reason or another, “you are not only not good enough, but because you are not good enough for our judges and you, the viewing public, you are also deserving of our public insults and scorn”. We don’t laugh with you, we all brazenly laugh at you.

The really sad fact is that so people today think that any media face time equates with fame and fame, no matter how brief or how humiliating, is the only thing that really matters. Without this degenerate state of Western civilization, Jerry Springer would have remained known only as the failed former Mayor of Cleveland and but of Drew Carey jokes.

The other theme of these shows is “the more dysfunctional you are, the more interested we are in watching you” and there’s nothing like watching a good train wreck in slow motion, right? Doesn’t this make you feel better about yourself? And isn’t it good clean fun to watch Paula Abdul and Whitney Houston descend into the hell of addiction right before our eyes?

Sid Caesar and Jackie Gleason; Playhouse 90, and Masterpiece Theater; Gunsmoke and The Twilight Zone have nothing on Survivor – Cook Island and The Bachelor. Today’s crop of TV shows surely exemplifies the Golden Age of Television.

I have an idea for a new “reality show”; let’s have Paris Hilton and that anorexic girl live among the mentally ill in a homeless shelter for a month and then in a nursing home with some Alztimers patients. What wacky fun those obscenely wealthy, morally abject icons of contemporary womanhood could have with those folks – just thing of all the jokes…..

If Simon Crowell had a contemporary in ancient Rome, he’d be sitting in the emperor’s box stirring up the crowd by saying – “those Christians are so pathetic- they can’t even die in an entertaining fashion and I’ve never seen sorrier excuses for lions. Let’s hope the condemned prisoners’ executions and gladiators’ fight to the death is better.” This would be followed by Maximus Tiberius Seacrest announcing to the crowd at the Coliseum, “Send your text message via your clay tablet to Caligula now and vote for your favorite”.

I’m seriously thinking of turning off the cable, tossing my TV in the dumpster and hunkering down with a good book while waiting for the final assault of the Barbarians at the Gate and Western Civilization’s final fall.

And you?