Free Republic

Matt was trying to explain how it felt to put his left hand on the naked right breast of a high-priced hooker. "Instantly, I felt life come into me," he told the television camera, and when he said "me" he clearly meant "a very specific part of me." Matt recalled deploying the counter-measures: He thought of Rosie O'Donnell and of baseball, which is no longer the American pastime but still stands unchallenged as a gender's pre-eminent distracting mental image. He envisioned hitting a home run but, dang it all, when he rounded third he pictured that naked, high-priced hooker waiting...

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - Although documentaries, game shows and hidden-camera shows have been around for decades, the amalgam of all three that's come to be known as "reality TV" has only been around for a few years. That's not a very long time to develop a set of across-the-board conventions and cliches, but in this saturated, accelerated media world, it's happened. There's the mish-mash, slice-of-America casting process that always seems to find a Virgin, a Jerk, a Bitch and other archetypes. The "journey" that each contestant takes. The overly ... long ... pauses employed at melodramatic voting-out ceremonies. All these...