A friend just posted to Facebook a link to another blog. It was a mother writing notes to her daughter about how to be a good, kind, loved woman…unlike the women on The Bachelor…a program shehad just watched.
I read stuff like that a lot. People talk about how horrified they areby the women on The Bachelor or Jersey Shore. The more politically oriented will also sometimes complain about Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken or Fox News.
It all leavesme with one simple question. If you don’t like it, don’t want your kids to grow up emulating it…why are you inviting it into the most sacred places of your life? You complain, yet You invite these people into your homes more frequently than you invite in your ostensible friends. You give it space in your brain and your limited time.
So it’s not as bad as you tell your child it is? Or. You feel better about yourself in comparison? Why keep feeding the beast?
Just Another Pretty Farce 
I think the concern is how pervasive the shows are, their influence and seeming popularity. At some point you have to stop rubber-necking the train wreck, but there is a horrid fascination.
They really are pervasive. I mean, I have never watched a single episode of Jersey Shore, not even a clip of a scene, outside of the times it’s advertised during commercial breaks of a show I am watching. But even so, I know who Snooki is, and what she looks like. And I know the premise of this or that other reality show, because it’s impossible not to be bombarded with that information. Commercials, covers of magazines that I see waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store, links I’m invited to click on while browsing the web, you name it. I don’t think that knowing they exist is corrupting or degrading or anything, but bad information does tend to drive out good, so they get in the way.
That said, I think people watch reality shows for the narrative. People like narrative, and it’s a lot cheaper for the networks to get it that way than by paying writers for it. And the viewers can even convince themselves that it’s real, because it’s not scripted. (It is edited to a fare-thee-well, of course, but that’s another story.)
Right now, I’m just hoping that Aaron Sorkin’s new show will turn out to be good. Because I like narrative that has a voice and a rhythm, and when he’s good, his voice is the best.
I must admit to a very bad weakness in my character. Sometimes I read blogs I hate just to feel that sense of disgust (I would guess this is self-righteousness at its worst), and sometimes I’m surprised at the positive or good content on these blogs I hate. I would imagine it’s the same way w/ TV shows–that sense of prurient disgust brings a kind of satisfaction. I don’t know whether these shows ever surprise w/ the positive, though, because I haven’t watched them.
I tend to see it as a pretty classic case of projection. A person watches the shows because they enjoy all the crap that they complain about everyone else enjoying. The complaining about it is just a justification to keep watching “just to see how terrible it all is.”
Same reason so many of the anti-gay folks come out in the end. People don’t surround themselves that fully with what they hate. They just don’t.