Reality TV Fare

As television viewers, we’ll watch anything.

For years, people have been carping about the downward spiral in TV fare.

While I don’t think we’ve hit rock bottom yet, I believe we’re close enough to see the pits and blemishes in the approaching stone.

Three years ago, it was an explosion of “reality TV” featuring concocted scenarios with allegedly real human beings (although the DNA tests still aren’t back on “Survivor” winner Richard Hatch) put into unrealistic situations.

The result?

“Survivor,” “Big Brother,” “Fear Factor,” et al.

Ummm, yeah, that’s realistic.

You’re trapped on a deserted island with a collection of people with camera-ready faces and bikini-friendly bodies, and you’re going to spend your endless free time jumping through hoops and conniving against your other island mates?

Yeah, right.

If they wanted to make it a REAL reality show about beautiful people marooned on a deserted island, they would feature an hour each week of video shots of grass huts emitting grunting noises from within.

The following year, television offered a series of competitions that got our blood pumping, including “American Idol” and a few other talent show clones that didn’t make it.

Personally, I thought this was a genre that had run its course after “Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour” in the fifties, but some bad ideas never go away, as proven by resurrections like “The Gong Show” and “Star Search.”

Last year, it was a foray into the board room, with Donald Trump’s famous catch-phrase “You’re fired!” on “The Apprentice.”

First, I find it ironic that a show featuring such a phrase could be popular in a social climate where “You’re fired!” is as much an anachronism as “Groovy, man!”

In this era of affirmative action, sex discrimination, civil rights, gay rights, equal opportunity employers, unions, and a nationwide infestation of personal injury lawyers, also known as scum-sucking bottom-dwelling vermin, you can’t actually fire anyone anymore.

“The Apprentice” will soon be joined by a spin-off featuring Martha Stewart.

Unlike some, I believe Stewart was wrongfully imprisoned for the made-up crimes they tried to hang on her.

She went to jail because her friend told her to sell her stock in his company?

I wouldn’t expect anything LESS from a friend!

If that’s a crime, then every woman in America should be doing time for telling her girlfriend “You should throw out that dress, honey, it makes you look fat.”

Or “I’m telling you, gurrul, you need to dump that man of yours. He no good!”

Also, for idiots like me who watched every episode of “The Apprentice” last year, do you realize that you raced home from your office job to catch 13 weeks of other people at their office job?

Vying for a bigger office job?

We actually take time out from griping about our jerk of a boss to watch a TV show featuring a jerk of a boss.

Personally, I think it’s time for us to give up these reality TV shows.

Or, if you can’t imagine getting through the day without them, try this.

Pretend that everything going on around you is part of a reality TV show.

And the best part is, pretend YOU are the star!

It’s just the latest offering from “Survivor” producer Mark Burnett.

It’s called “Getting A Life.”