What is Wrong with America

I'll admit to occasionally getting sucked into reality TV. I used to watch America's Next Top Model with some girlfriends religiously. I'm not really a fan, but I understand the appeal of mindless entertainment.

Today, while at the gym, one of the TV's was tuned to "A Real Chance of Love", a new reality dating show on VH1. Apparently, these two charming brothers who weren't classy enough for New York were chosen for this show. Their names? "Real" and "Chance", hence the title of the show. (I must say, these were two of the most ghetto-ed out guys on TV). The episode I saw involved 7 of the women (who are largely split into "Real's girls" and "Chance's girls", but there seems to be some overlap) going to a club with the guys, only the guys get into a fight with a dude who has the nerve to hit on one of the (scantily-clad) ladies. The guys are "Pissed!" at this dude, so they talk smack, dude talks smack, dude pushes, brothers take him down. One of them hits dude on the head with a glass bottle. Girls are pushed out the door into their stretch limo by the producers. In the car on the ride home, they hold hands and pray to Jesus for their "boys".

(It gets better)

Upon arrival at their house, the police are waiting. They individually question the girls, on camera of course, as to what they saw. Who hit the dude with the glass bottle? they ask repeatedly. They threaten to make the girls accessories to murder if the guy dies. Some girls cry, some say "so and so did it" and then change their story, one girl flat out says "guy x did it". One girl says "I'm not talking to you" and walks out, and one girl says "I didn't see nuthin', they pushed us out the door." The guy who did the hitting is locked up in cuffs and dragged out.

Surprise! His brother pops up and says it was all a joke, a challenge! The cops come back in and laugh, and dude walks in--he's fine. The brothers wanted a "Ride or Die" kind of girl (which is the title of the episode), the kind of girl who is loyal to the end and will never give up her man. The challenge winners? The one who just didn't say anything and the one who lied and said she didn't see nothing. The other girls were pissed. "I never talked to no cops before! I got no experience with police interrogation! It's not fair!" says one. The girl who told the truth to the cops is angry that they played with her emotions like that, and ends up getting booted off the show at the end of the episode.

My brain almost imploded on itself.

Not a single one of them mentioned anything about the truth or seemed to give a crap that (for all they knew) a guy was dying in the hospital. It's all well and good that the one chick simply refused to talk to the cops--that's her constitutional right. Any one of these girls could have said "I want a lawyer" and I'd have cheered them on. But for all the rest to straight up lie--if they'd been in a real police situation, that would have gotten them in far deeper trouble. After the fact, they were pissed because they'd never had the chance to lie to cops before, it was hard! The one girl who just told the truth was booted out of the house for not being loyal enough. And I just kept thinking, while watching them pray for their boys, that Jesus would want nothing to do with this situation. These ghetto guys, sitting around with their skanky women, got so mad that a guy dared to flirt with one of their ladies (and who would assume that 7 women all belong to 2 men?) that a fight ensued. Yes, it was all staged, but these girls believed it was all real, and they didn't find it weird!

Truly, the next great health campaign, in the spirit of "Just Say No to Drugs" from Nancy Reagan, needs to be "Get Rid of Terrible 'Reality' TV". Either that, or I'm going to have to put a condom over the television to protect my eyeballs from that kind of syphilitic programming.