Suffer The Little Children....

I trust that the phenomenon of the reality show on television is a fleeting one, and the day will soon come when we see the last of the fame and fortune shows. It started with American Idol, which spawned, among others, So You Think You Can Dance, Who Is the Greatest Celebrity Impersonator?, American Inventor, Last Comic Standing, and America's Got Talent, which is just The Gong Show redux and reaches new heights of irony with its title. The dirty and not exactly well-concealed truth is that while most of the contestants on these shows think they're jockeying for a place on the fast track to fame, they're in fact candidates for public humiliation. It says scary things about our culture that people seem so mesmerized by it, a blending of perp walk and red carpet.