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Welcome Back to the ColiseumReality TV Shows, Trading Spouses and Sanity
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To understand this rant, you'll want to watch this video clip from CrooksAndLiars.com. PLEASE NOTE: At the moment the video clip link doesn't seem to work - I've messed with it for a half hour now. To see the video, go to the Crooks And Liars website, or try cut/pasting the following: http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Trading-Spouses1.wmv - it works if we put it into a browser, but not if you click on the link. Go figure! They may have some sort of weird routing software on the site. This is a clip from the "reality" tv show, Trading Spouses. It is truly frighening. One of the wives returns from a week with the other family and goes into a mad tirade regarding how the wife of the other family was "dark-sided" (i.e. pagan). I haven't seen the full show (the only "reality show" I watch is Extreme Makeovers Home Edition, so I'm not a connoisseur of reality TV), so I can't say whether the other woman was pagan or not, but they did mention that she had Harry Potter books <gasp>! Her rant is scary to the extreme, and on face value I could - if I wanted - take it as "this is how the evil fundis are". Scary. Scary as hell. But what scares me also, is upon reading the comments by the members of the forum, I found so much vehemence regarding the fact that the woman is fat and ugly. Yes, the woman was horribly overweight, and not very attractive. Granted she CAN do something about the fat. But lay off, folks. I'm reminded of a story about an old lady in a grocery store picking up the chickens and sniffing under their wings. A guy walks by and says, "hey, lady, can YOU pass that inspection?" On the other hand, whether or not some of the events were prompted (as some commentators suggested they were scripted by the show) she is truly wacked. As a pagan (lol one of those "dark-sided" people -- NOT!) it scares me to know that there really are people like this in the world. Maybe I'm the one who's crazy, but I was under the assumption that Christ's message was one of love, acceptance and tolerance. Fortunately, I've been blessed to know many true Christians, who follow Christ's path. What perturbs me the most about all this, isn't this woman, as insane and in need of serious therapy as she is. Nor is it even the fact that (if this is anything close to her normal state) her children and husband are being seriously abused. What really scares me is that there is enough of a viewership for this sort of garbage that the Fox Network thinks it can make money on it. When I was a kid, we had game shows like Jeopardy (which allowed people to flex their brain muscles and prove their knowledge) and reality shows like Queen for a Day (which celebrated people's lives, letting them know how much they were valued). Now we've got shows like Survivor and Big Brother (lie, cheat, and backstab everyone around you); The Weakest Link (make some poor person feel like a schmuck because they didn't have all the answers) and this Trading Spouses crap. The only thing different between this and the Roman Coliseum is the actual shedding of blood. I wonder when our media will go THERE. Or think on the public executions of the last few thousand years. Merchants used to come to those and sell food and souvenirs to the ravening crowds. It saddens me. Here we think that because this is the 21st century, we've become so wise and enlightened. But are we any different from our predecesors? What has gone wrong with our society that we want to watch, not the uplifting of our fellow man, but their downfall? What happened to "Love thy neighbor as thyself"? What happened to Superman's credo of "Truth, Justice and the American Way"? We can't blame the Christians. We can't blame the Pagans. We can't even blame the media - after all, they wouldn't sell it if they couldn't even market it. However, what we can blame is the vicious impulses in ourselves that cause us to lash out at a woman who is obese and ugly, and obviously in need of compassion. Yes, she's nuts, yes, she's scary. But how is it that we've built a society that wants to tear and rend those around us? Back to Extreme Makeovers Home Edition: What I love about that show is that it brings out the good in people. Folks from all over the neighborhood come out of the woodwork to help a deserving family. They line the streets, willing to smash down walls and windows, pound nails, lift sheetrock, donate their money and cheer the family on. Don't want to watch the media's high-tech version of blood-sport? Call your local cable provider. Call the companys that advertise with them. Vote with your calls and your dollars. It's all up to us, folks. We can watch the modern gladiators duke it out, or we can call upon our better angels/higher selves and create some positivity in the world. |
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