Things I Hate: Reality Revisited

There is a joy to writing, the crafting of the written word to caress the reader’s mind, informing it or entertaining it, perhaps even touching another human heart through moving words. Great works of literature abound, words strung together to echo humankind’s trials and travails and triumphs.

And then there’s this shit.

As if it weren’t enough that reality TV had to take a dump all over our culture and our lexicon, it’s just been announced that Snooki is writing a second book. You read that right…book number TWO. Now, I may be living proof that anyone with a pulse and a keyboard can look in a mirror and delude themselves into thinking themselves a writer, but this takes even Buddy’s cake.

I can guarantee you this…I would allow someone to use a pacemaker on me as a suppository before I’d read this. I’d have my testicles laminated before reading either of Snooki’s bookies, and that’s not a euphemism for her rack. It may be the finest example of prose this side of paradise, and yet I will do vodka eyeball shots before polluting my peepers with the pages of this publication.

These celebutards from “the Shore” have spread into culture like some plague. Snooki’s writing, Situation is mangling stand up comedy, and What’s-his-face is on commercials every 17 goddamn minutes trying to make me lose weight. In order, these are someone who I can’t decide if it’s a Butterface or a Butterball, a dude most famous for lifting his shirt, and a guy I can’t remember amongst JWHO and some other chick. What an amazing cast.

I’ll repeat the refrain: I just don’t get how a bunch of schadenfreude train wrecks make it to celebrity status. Athletes? Sure. Actors? I get it. Musicians? Yeah, ok. Astronauts? Hell YES. But when I realize that more people can tell me the entire cast of Jersey Shore than the 4 astronauts on board the Atlantis right now (or for that matter on the first fucking moon landing), it just pisses me right the hell off. (By the way, that’s Christopher Ferguson, Doug Hurley, Rex Walheim, and Sandy Magnus. Take that.)

Why are our heroes made up of people who’s most endearing qualities are their ability to drink and screw and yell? Doesn’t that imply how totally screwed we are? Perhaps I simply infer.

And let me be honest…I don’t necessarily think these folks are wrong for cashing in, and certainly not for their behaviour. Heck, I’ve had a few parties that might put the Gweeds and Gweedettes to shame. It’s the disproportionate veneration that bugs me.

Can we pay Italy to just keep them? Can we create an island of misfit reality stars?

And so, I salute you again, reality TV. This time with two fingers. One on each hand. Guess which ones. May you swiftly be washed away from our televisions, before someone decides The Running Man is actually a good idea.