This is not the article I wanted to write.  When I set out to write a review of MTV’s controversial new reality show Jersey Shore, I had a pretty good idea of how it was going to go.  I was going to write my standard (dare I say “trademark?”), long-winded rant which would combine obscure references, big words, and level one swears to express my deep displeasure with the show’s public displays of douchebaggery.

It seemed pretty straightforward. The show is a vocal proponent of self-ascribed nicknames, the state of New Jersey, and Italian-Americans engaging in non-mob activities. I had (and have) no interest in any of those things, and was confident in my ability to heap scorn on Jersey Whore.

But that was before I watched my first episode.

Fifteen minutes into “researching” my article, a strange thing began happening to me.  It’s the same thing that happened to John Smith in Pocahontas.  And the main character in Avatar.  And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  I fell in love with that which I set out to destroy.

Since last Monday, I have watched all eight episodes of Jersey Shore and several of the “After Hours” Q&A sessions with cast members.  During the course of my research, I was forced to modify my article’s thesis.  It now reads: Yo, Tila Tequila, I’m really happy for you and I’ma let you finish, but Jersey Shore is the best reality show of all time.  OF ALL TIME!

I know.  Calling a show the best reality show of all time is a bit like calling the Phoenix Mercury the best team in the WNBA.  It’s not saying much and it’s still not real television.  But it is something.  Love it or hate it, reality television speaks to our culture.  Since the debut of The Real World in 1992, reality television has been increasing in both airtime and, more importantly, influence.  From The Bachelor to The Hills to The View, reality TV is everywhere.

So it is no small thing when I say, with complete sincerity, that the eight juiced-up, fake-baked, foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, hard-fighting, STD-collecting, toilet bowl-hugging Guidos in the Jersey Shore house represent the pinnacle of all that reality TV aspires to be.

Don’t misunderstand me.  The stars of the show are every bit the self-absorbed, inarticulate, non-contributing zeroes you imagine they are.  The Italian-American organizations who criticize the show as “the biggest step backward for Italian-Americans since the birth of John Bon Jovi” are exactly right.  The cast members suck to a degree that is both impressive and remarkably consistent.  As an example, here is one exchange which is particularly illustrative of the lifestyles and IQs we’re dealing with.

(Sami “Sweetheart” and Ronnie are debriefing after their first night of promiscuous sex)

• Sami: Yeah, I had sex.  I mean, of course you’re gonna have sex if you like somebody.  Um, hello!  It’s natural!
• Ronnie: We smooshed. (fist pumps)

They are, without exception, terrible people.  And that is precisely the point.  The laws of reality TV dictate that every show must have a “token toolshed.”  For a reality show to survive it needs a guy/girl/trannie who will stir the pot, say offensive things, get someone pregnant, OD on NyQuil, and generally move the plot forward.  To effectively fill this role, a cast member must lack morals, restraint, basic human decency, and – most importantly – anything resembling self-awareness.

With Jersey Shore, MTV has for the first time stocked a reality show exclusively with token toolsheds.  Every guy is “that guy.”  Every girl is “OMG…ho bag!!!!”  It’s as if the producers only accepted applications from society’s Douchebag Elite (i.e. DJs, club promoters, assistant managers of fitness clubs, amateur models, and Ed Hardy enthusiasts.)  This makes for a fairly predictable storyline (i.e. posture, argue, drink, fist fight, hook-up, pass out, repeat), but it also makes for brilliant reality television.

As I have said before, reality television is not here to celebrate America’s best and brightest.  That’s what the Country Music Awards are for.  Reality television is for shining a spotlight on all that is base, freakish, and dysfunctional in America.  We watch families disintegrate and coeds get alcohol poisoning and we can’t help but feel better about ourselves.  It’s the feel-good genre of the 21^st century!  With the help of reality television, even the worst parent, the most irresponsible drunk, the most promiscuous cheerleader, and the most fist-pumpingest frat boy can point at someone else and say, “well, at least I’m not THAT bad.”

The problem is, as America accelerates its slippery slide to Sodom, the reality television machine has had to scramble to keep pace.  As real life douchebags strut out of the closet and into Armani Exchange in ever-increasing numbers, the reality show douchebags must rise to an even higher (or sink to an even lower) level.

In that respect, Jersey Shore may have saved reality television.  Vinny, Ronnie, Snooki, Sweetheart, Jolie, Pauly D, JWoww, and The Situation are the new gold standard by which all future television toolsheds will be judged.  These eight have advanced the limits of douchebaggery to heights never before thought possible, and I refuse to believe any actual person will ever equal them.  Or maybe I just don’t want to.

I take comfort in their accomplishment.  I sleep more soundly at night.  Or at least I hope I do. The Jersey Shore season finale is tomorrow night and, judging from the previews, it’s going be an emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually draining hour of television.  Trust me, you do NOT want to miss it.

(In other, unrelated MTV news, I had my first “I have lost all connection with young people” moment last week.  While innocently watching Jersey Shore, I was treated to a public service announcement featuring an apparently nude girl standing in an empty gym and holding a large poster over her lady parts.  The girl stared at the ground in shame while a voiceover intoned, “If someone pressures you to send revealing photos, you can say no.  Because there’s a thin line between him and the rest of the world.”  For the first, but assuredly not the last, time permit me to inquire, “Is THAT what kids are doing these days?”)

Saturday night in early June in Southern California, guess what I did?  If you guessed: attended an impromptu Miley Cyrus concert, rode around Sunset Boulevard in a limo, and danced in an over-sized Taco Bell that’s been converted into a night club, you would be wrong.  That was Friday night.  On Saturday, I was sitting at home watching a mini marathon of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” and losing faith in the future of mankind.

As has been well documented on this site, I am a big fan of trash reality television (Girls Next Door and Shot at Love w/ Tila Tequila being my two favorites).  Trash reality helps us all feel better about ourselves by presenting us with “real” people who, though rich, are less intelligent than the average iPod shuffle (2nd generation or newer).  They are the cable television equivalent of laughing when an old person falls down, and heaven knows we need that kind of humor now more than ever, what with the economy and all.

What I am not a fan of, however, are reality shows that document the utterly uninteresting, thoroughly commonplace lives of people who happen to be wealthy.  I am of course referring to The Hills and all their spin-offs.  I don’t give a damn about the inter-gender drama going on in the local high school cafeteria .  Should I care about the same drama just because it’s happening in Beverly Hills?  This same “gawk at the rich” format afflicts “The Real Housewives of New Jersey.”  They spend hours talking about who’s cheating on whom, who’s been a bitch to whom, and who bought what with what credit card.  There is, however, one notable and disturbing difference.  The protagonists are moms.  Which means they have kids.  Which means they are not only making a circus of their own lives, they are also erasing any hope their children might have of staying out of rehab.

For those of you unfamiliar with the trash TV scene, TRHoNJ is the fourth in an ongoing Bravo series, which films wealthy housewives in swanky neighborhoods across America – from Orange County to Manhattan – while they spend their husbands’ money and compare boob jobs.  As a side note, the fact that the New Jersey show does not feature any families living in meatpacking plants or atop heaps of industrial waste immediately calls the show’s “real” aspect into question.  These Carmela Soprano clones are hardly “real housewives” and the parallels with the mafia matriarch serve only to create the false hope that they might get gunned down by a rival goomba.

But I digress.  Since these women are all mothers, a fair portion of the show depicts their interactions with their children.  As you might expect these women all “love their families more than anything in the world.”  To that end they are more than happy to take their 12 year-old daughters shopping for thongs, get their 7 year-old daughters signed with modeling agencies, openly discuss their failing marriages in front of their kids, and basically do their best to ensure all their children will be pregnant by the age of fifteen.  And the cameras eat it up.

These are women who are operating, both mentally and socially, on the level of  the average American eighth grader, yet here they are, charged with nurturing another human being to adulthood.  Their parental competency is only slightly higher than that of the three drunks in “The Hangover” who wake up to discover a baby in their hotel room’s closet.  At least in the movie, the baby gets returned to its real family.  No such luck for the Jersey kids.

As stated above, I have no problem with people who volunteer to be America’s court jesters.  Reality TV exists to shine a spotlight on all that is excessive, petty, and pathetic in modern Americana, and I – from a purely ethnographic standpoint – am thankful for it.  If Nick Lachay and Jessica Simpson want to film the first two years of their marriage and then act surprised when they get divorced, that’s their business.  If Heidi Montag wants to make her existence the punchline to a joke, so be it.  This is America.  It is their right.   But when kids get dragged into the picture, it suddenly seems less amusing and just plain irresponsible.

In celebrating the gaudy, vacuous lives of this clique of money-pits with breasts, Bravo cannot help but focus on the fact that these women are terrible parents.  Bad parenting makes good television and the parents and producers are happy to exploit it.  But let’s not forget that, with the possible exception of a mid-pregnancy crack habit, there is nothing more destructive to a child’s future than a television camera.  And yet on rolls the Real Housewives series.  Now in it’s fourth season.  For that reason, I have commenced an indefinite boycott of the Bravo channel.  I can handle a television channel stealing three hours of my Saturday night.  I cannot handle one undermining the future of my race.   I will not be an enabler to our extinction.

That is all.

-Kent-

I once had a friend whose list of life goals included amassing a fortune large enough to purchase MTV.  Having purchased it, he would hire the most despicable people he could find and fill the network’s airtime with debauchery and filth the likes of which have not been seen outside Vatican City cira 1500.  Now before you rush to include this friend in the ranks of my other midget-loving, smut-peddling buddies, let me explain.  The purpose of this parade of perversion was not to celebrate man’s sinfulness but rather to shock MTV’s viewing public with depravity and tastelessness so raw, so over the top that they could not help but wretch and repent.  In his mind, drastic measures of this kind were the only thing that could finally convince Americans to jump off their greased slide to Sodom before the brimstone starts falling.

Well, a brief stopover at MTV yesterday (on my way to the SOAP network for an afternoon of OC reruns) has led me to conclude that either he has achieved his goal much sooner than anticipated, or someone else has beaten him to it.  Mere words and apocalyptic imagery fail to express the depths to which MTV has sunk.  It depresses me more than a little when I consider that the tripe I witnessed might appeal to any target audience, except perhaps the Amish who are unfamiliar with television and therefore enthralled by moving images flashing in quick succession.

The “Music” part of MTV has obviously been a joke for some time now; I was unaware that the “TV” part was a misnomer as well.  Yet this is apparently what has happened as each year they find ways to roll out a lineup more soul-suckingly banal than the one before.  Last fall’s bisexual dating competition, Shot at Love with Tila Tequila, was so groundbreakingly deplorable it spawned not only a second season but two spinoffs as well (That’s Amore! and A Double Shot At Love).  Just when we thought it impossible to out-suck the magnificently unwatchable crapfest that was Laguna Beach, they unleashed The Hills upon us.  When that monstrosity threatened to open up a portal into hell, they flung wide the gates and dumped The City and Bromance into America’s living rooms.  And that is only the beginning.  From before dawn until well after dusk they pollute the airwaves with programming ranging from shockingly awkward (Parental Control) to mind-numbingly dull (True Life: I’m Competitive With My Best Friend). This is the new MTV.

You have to admit, this transformation is completely baffling, and perhaps even a bit sad.  I mean, this is MTV we’re talking about!  The company that single-handedly transformed the music industry.  The people who invented the music video.  The creators of reality TV.  The cultural behemoth that defined a generation.  MTV! And they’ve traded it all for what?  For this!  For a worthless parade of Bachelor knock-offs and faux-reality dramas documenting the manufactured lives of boring, sycophantic celebutantes?  I don’t get it.  I mean, I’m sure two decades of convincing kids to hate their parents can be exhausting work, but surely it’s more rewarding than this!  To go from being the mouthpiece of all things hip, liberal, and anti-establishment to being the mouthpiece for a bunch of Jerry Springer rejects and Lindsay Lohan wannabes has got to be a bit depressing.

Some conservative parents may celebrate MTV’s self-castration, but don’t be fooled; MTV is as evil now as it ever was.  That’s right: not irresponsible, not misguided, not irrelevant, EVIL.  At least when they were concentrating on corrupting America’s youth, we knew what they stood for.  They had convictions and positions that could be identified and attacked.  Now, they stand for nothing and as a result there is no limit to the depths they can dredge up.  The mindless drivel that millions of kids are TIVOing every week is every bit as destructive as the anti-family propaganda of the eighties and nineties.  Mark my words, the girls from The Hills and the vapid, unintelligent fame-mongering they represent will destroy our nation far before the gays and the immigrants get around to it.

In the end, MTV assures us of one thing: John Calvin was right.  Mankind is indeed universally, gleefully, and totally depraved.  MTV could not exist if this were not the case.  Disagree?  I invite you to sit through an entire episode of Paris Hilton’s My New BFF.  Talk to me then.  (Be advised, life may not seem worth living by the time the episode is over.)

(Like Lot begging mercy for the one righteous family in Sodom, I would like to offer “Rob and Big” as the only MTV show not deserving of our universal and spirited condemnation.  If you have not witnessed the amusing antics and escapades of professional skater Rob Dyrdek and his bodyguard/bestfriend Big Black, I implore you to do so at your next convenience.)