Posted on 07/15/2011 6:50:42 AM PDT by markomalley
Some “reality shows” are designed to advertise wanton misbehavior and stupidity for its own sake. There’s no “life lesson,” just an exercise in how you can grade your own moral worth on a “Jersey Shore” curve.
That is not the case with TLC’s “Sister Wives.” For TLC (The Learning Channel, a misnomer demanding initials-only), it was the usual slam-dunk oddball premise: Won’t people be curious to see how four wives – married to the same man – get along in the same house?
The show’s stars, Kody Brown and his wives, want much more than fame and fortune. They want to make polygamy respectable, even legalized. The show was a surprise hit for TLC, drawing an average of 2.2 million viewers over “Season 1" last fall.” The polygamists have recognized the power of pop culture – particularly television – and are pouncing to normalize this abhorrent behavior.
If this was in any doubt, it was removed when Brown & Co. recently hired hotshot Washington lawyer Jonathan Turley and sued in federal court in Salt Lake City to get Utah’s polygamy law voided. Brown and his four wives knew they were taking a risk of being prosecuted when they signed the deal with TLC, but it was all calculated, with an activist motive.
Kody Brown proclaimed, “While we understand that this may be a long struggle in court, it has already been a long struggle for my family and other plural families to end the stereotypes and unfair treatment given consensual polygamy.”
Robyn Brown (wife number four) also said they wanted to make a political point. “It's okay for us to live this way, honestly. I'm sorry, but this is a nation of freedom of choice,” Brown declared on National Public Radio. “We should have this choice, and I want my kids to know that.”
Turley denounced Utah’s law as an injustice: “There is no allegation of child abuse, no allegation of child brides, no allegations of so-called collateral crimes, but prosecutors have stated publicly that they believe the family is committing a felony every night on television.”
Actually, “Sister Wives” isn’t on TV every night – thankfully, it’s only a Sunday night show. But is TLC concerned? Hardly. It has felt that the Brown family’s legal peril and courtroom activism only add a layer of “edginess” to the show. It doesn’t matter one bit to TLC that it is the showroom for a campaign nuking the nuclear family. It felt no need to comment on the Brown lawsuit. All is fair in love and television.
Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, whose office would defend the statute, is skeptical. He called the lawsuit "somewhat of a PR ratings stunt for their show." That’s an understatement when you consider that he polygamy law hasn’t been used to prosecute anyone in eight years.
Local police in Lehi, Utah launched an investigation last September after "Sister Wives" made its debut on TLC. How could they not? They were dared to do so on national TV. Then they turned their findings over to the Utah County attorney to determine whether charges are warranted based on the state's bigamy law. Charges were never filed.
What’s sad about this whole exercise is that media chroniclers of the Browns, from network TV to Oprah to blogs and wire services, routinely treat them as sympathetic figures. Every exotic alternative lifestyle is assumed to be progressive and therefore admirable and is not only to be tolerated, but welcomed. It’s rare that anyone appears for five seconds on TV to protest the Browns and TLC. NBC’s Today show has lent them two sympathetic interviews without opposition, and even allowed their news anchor Natalie Morales to moonlight and interview the Browns for their own TLC special last fall.
It’s even sadder that the political world would take this TLC show as an opportunity to propose further shredding the institution of marriage. On the liberal website Slate, blogger Jessica Grose blithely proposed that “Perhaps the best way to keep polygamous practice consensual and the power equal [between husband and wives] is not to just decriminalize it, but to legislate it...polygamous couples could enter into contracts that are less like marriage contracts and more like commercial partnership contracts.” Or, if we could borrow the TLC metaphor, like television contracts.
It is somehow not enough that the entertainment media would try to undermine traditional marriage and the traditional nuclear family in their bed-hopping soap-operatic scripted dramas. Now it’s also the role of “reality” television to suggest that a man with four “spiritual wives” is exactly the same as you and me, and that perhaps our legal boundaries against polygamy are now unwarranted and archaic...as long as it scores 2 million in the Nielsens.
What about the 298 million Americans who are not watching?
why in the world would anybody want four mother-in-laws?
I want equal timne for polyandry!
...or is that mothers-in-law?
LOL. Consecutively or concurrently? In either case, mine was a darling. I wish we still had her :)
Just another flavor of “Three’s Company.”
I think mother-in-law’s.
Either way, since the gays and government redefined marriage to anyone that wants to marry anyone they cannot stop this.
:)
Don't worry, MZ, the normalization of polyandry is coming.
As is “consenting” pedophilia and incestuous relationships.
The noun (mother) is what the plurality is, therefore it’s motherS in law. Think attorneys general, surgeons general, and the like. The adjective phrase (in law) remains the same, because there are not more laws being generated by the union.
Your referenced site is, to be blunt, wrong.
Just because “everyone” does something does not make it correct.
Don’t get me going about personal pronoun usage! < LOL >
if you define marriage based upon the feelings of those involved, then you end up with polygamy, beastiality (I really dig my cat!), incest, heck, I dig my motorcycle, why not?
looks like the cat is out of the bag, now.
I swear, when polygamy and incest become legal I’m going to marry all my children. Bestiality won’t be far behind, at which point I’m going to marry all my pets. Think of the tax advantages!
“One” spouse is a ‘hand-full’. Anyone even thinking of more than that (let alone “4”) cannot be mentally balanced and needs to have their head examined!
I’m not real big on Language based on usage. There are rules and laws for language just as with life, etc. One reason, I might add, that the Constitution has managed to assume the toilet tissue role it has managed over the years, not based on law, but on usage or lack of.
At least when I grew up the rule was, the noun/subject got the plural.
After all, the destruction of the traditional family structure is in the works and by calling families "nuclear" it only adds to the erosion.
Substituting time-honored, positive words with alien, negative ones is in strict compliance with the teaching imperatives of Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky.
Traditions, customs, meanings, religion, history, moral standards, roots, time-honored established culture....all must be displaced or erased so that dictates like Obama's "radical change for America" can take place in the soul-less vacuum created.
Leni
Could it turn into gay polygamy marriage? It will never end until the marriage of a hamster and a hippo. n/s
i can’t agree with you more! one is plenty! two (or more) and you’re outnumbered!
moth·er–in–law - noun
plural: moth·ers–in–law
Some people might make a distinction between how they talk and how they write. When writing people should employ correct grammar, usage, etc.
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