Reality TV
By Brian Cabell
Friday, October 16, 2009 at 9:49 a.m.
What more can you say about the "balloon-boy" episode?
It entertained us---live!!---for a few hours across all the cable news networks. It'll provide water cooler talk and scintillating analysis for days. And it's provided can't-miss, inexpensive content for TV programmers.
It's reality TV at its best, and worst.
It was real, it was genuine, it was (we thought) a life-and-death situation. We were watching an almost incredible drama play out before our very eyes, we were hoping and praying for a happy ending.
Then we found out what really happened, and learned that the real-life drama was nothing more than a fraud, the result apparently of parents who don't have much in the way of parenting skills.
But the worst was yet to come. The parents, rather than expressing embarrassment and then retreating into their house with their children to deal with the trauma, decided to exploit it.
Appearances on the Today Show? Sure! Good Morning America? Great! Anybody else?? We'll appear on camera, our children in tow, for anybody, everybody! Just make sure the lighting's good and our microphones are working properly. We want to do this right.
And if our six year old boy, who just went through this ordeal, happens to throw up on national TV---twice!!---well, that's just the price of celebrity.
It's sad and sick.
I've never been a fan of the TV reality shows because the concepts and the "drama" (along with the soundtracks) are utterly contrived. Who, in their right mind, would allow producers and cameras to intrude upon their private lives and make them do ridiculous stunts?
As it turns out, apparently a lot of us would. We want to be stars. We want our 15 minutes.
Which is fine. Go for it. But please, please, just leave the children behind. Let them grow up away from "reality TV".
