Archive: Opinions

EditorialWhen the Salahis crashed President Obama's first White House state dinner last month they were lucky.  It was a slow news week, and since they purportedly did it for publicity, a slow news week was good.  Almost a month later their story is still popping up all over the media, and pundits are having a field day.  The couple has their own publicist, and she immediately set upon setting up interviews with major news outlets.  They have been widely reported to be drumming up publicity so they can become reality show stars.

I'm thinking that if I can crash the Village of Lansing holiday party I could get my own reality show.  Except I'm invited.  And I can't go this year.  And I don't want to be on a reality show.

First of all, reality shows are not reality.  They don't even look like any kind of reality I would want to live in.  I'm not talking about shows like 'The Apprentice' or 'American Idol' or 'Project Runway.'  Those are actually game shows that happen to span over the course of several months. 

The people on these shows can actually do something, and the winner gets a valuable prize that helps them in their career.  In which they will actually DO that something.  Sure, they try to emulate reality shows by showing the competitors dishing catty trash talk about their fellow contestants.  But for the most part they're just game shows that take so long that the game isn't enough to fill the time.  So they try to spice it up with unrealistic reality-show-style fillers that have the result that talented achievers are made to look like less than they are.

Actual reality shows create people who are famous for being famous.  In most cases that is not a good thing.  Look at how hotel heiress Paris Hilton, has created a truly miserable public image of herself.  You would think that the only reason to so drastically soil your image and honor would be for a LOT of money.  But, God knows, Hilton doesn't need money.  There have even been some indications that she isn't just the brainless boob of questionable morals she tries to make us think she is -- her campaign video response to John McCain was savvy, self-aware and funny.  So what could possibly motivate her?

The Salahis and 'Ballon Boy' hoax perpetrator Richard Heene made it big in the media, though I haven't noticed that they have gotten reality shows.  It is fitting that they are caught in actual reality, facing the consequences of their acts in real life.  I hope they will be prosecuted and punished.  Because that's how reality is supposed to work when you do things as outrageous as they did.

I really don't think people who breach White house security should be rewarded with a lucrative television contract.  I don't even think they deserve the media attention they have already gotten.  It is alarming that the mainstream media thinks this stuff is important enough to give it as much attention as they do.  It drags so-called legitimate journalism into reality TV-style mud.

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