TV reality shows

The Kardashian Kard Saga: Proof That We Are Doomed?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

In “Terminator II,” there is  a scene in which young John Connor–desperately trying, along with his mother and the android killing machine sent from the future to protect the boy, to prevent the apocalyptic future that waits for him—sees young children gleefully pretending to murder each other with toy guns.  “We’re not going to make it, are we?” he asks the Terminator. “People, I mean.” The fact that a bank has chosen the Trashy Kardashian Sisters to promote a credit card aimed at teenagers prompts approximately the same sense of futility. At a time of crisis in which our culture that desperately needs to encourage responsible fiscal conduct led by financial institutions we can trust, this is what we get.

We’re doomed. Continue reading →

Rewarding Wrongdoers to Corrupt Us All

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

It would be wonderful if Steven Slater would go before the cameras and say,

“I want to apologize to Jet Blue and its passengers for my conduct. I was frustrated and emotionally over-wrought, and I wrongly endangered the air travelers, betrayed by co-workers, and embarrassed my employers. I am not a folk hero or a role model. I am ordinary human being who lost control of his emotions, and behaved badly. I am sorry. If my meltdown contributes to a national dialogue that reminds people that we need to be civil patient and kind to one another, then at least something productive will have come out of an incident that I sincerely regret.”

That’s not going to happen. Continue reading →

Petersen Was Right: “Jon & Kate” Exploited Their Kids

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Back when everyone was buzzing about TLC’s reality show “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” long before the dark side of the show began to emerge, before the messy divorce of the couple, before Kate was revealed as a castrating control freak and Jon showed himself to have the maturity of a 12-year-old, and long, long before Kate demonstrated that she may be the least watchable dancer ever to appear in televised dance show, child performer advocate Paul Petersen was sounding the alarm that the show violated child labor laws. Reality show producers sneak in through loop-holes in the laws regulating scripted shows, and Petersen, to  nasty derision from some quarters, kept making the point that what the Gosselins were doing with their eight children was against the law, harmful to them, and wrong.

Now that the show is off the air, Pennsylvania, where it was filmed, has finally gotten around to looking into Petersen’s allegations, and guess what? He was right all the time. Continue reading →

“Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew” and Reality Show Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Duncan Roy is a director, producer and writer whom I had never heard of, and I didn’t watch his exploits as a patient/reality show performer on VH1’s “Celebrity Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew .” The reason for the latter was a mixture of ethics and taste: feeding the fame addiction of celebrities while supposedly treating their other addictions seemed wrong to me, and inducing sex-addicted female porn stars, beauty queens and models to go into therapy with similarly attractive and sexually obsessive men is ridiculous, like setting “The Biggest Loser” at a 24 hour, all-you-can-eat smorgasbord. Continue reading →