Reality TV is Not Reality

[I'm bumping up this entry because another season of The Bachelorette has started.]

It should come as no surprise to any adult with any sense that "reality" television is not reality. News teams that attempt to give us reality for the sake of informing us quite often fail to provide reality (often by what they don't show) - so shows that are openly about entertainment certainly aren't going to be reality.

I bring this up now not just because another season of that joke, The Bachelor, has come and gone, but because comedian and podcast superstar Adama Carolla recently explained a few important things we didn't see on a recent episode of Celebrity Apprentice. As the article points out, since real charities will have to deal with real consequences as a result of how the show plays out, it is a little more important how producers manipulate the situation than, say, what happens on the latest Kardashian series or season of The Bachelor.

I like Adam's work. If nothing else, I would have liked to see him continue on the show because of the humor he brought to it.

"Reality" television is not reality. It simply features characters who are aware, and behave according to that awareness, that they are on a television show. What is that? Postmodern? Self-aware? There's probably a better term than "reality".

On Law and Order SVU, the character Detective Benson is not aware she is on a television show.

On The Bachelor, every single one of the participants is a character, even if the actors are using their real names or actual stage names, who are all aware they are on a reality show. Same goes goes for Survivor or Celebrity Apprentice or Storage Wars any other "reality" show.

Just as it is with other television shows, the writers, directors, producers, and editors can craft the shows to portray the characters in way the performers might not be like in their lives.

The difference is, more people are likely to realize that a character on a "scripted" sitcom or drama is not the same as the actor portraying that character. Yes, some people have had trouble with that, but I think fewer people have trouble with that than with "reality" shows. Since some reality shows record and entire season before any of it airs, the participants might have no clue what's being done to their character until it is too late to attempt to do anything about it.

See this previous entry on The Bachelor and this one as well.

[For what it is worth, producers and participants have pretty much revealed that the shows of The Bachelor franchise are somewhat artificial and "scripted" or a put-on, rather than reality.]

Wilcox Still Trying to Stop the Bleeding From Prager University Marriage Video

First Prager University squandered some of its great status, and now The Federalist is having a little part of itself die on the same hill.

W. Bradford Wilcox, perhaps reeling from the response to his Prager U video, wrote about some of the responses. (His appearance on Prager's radio show wasn't enough.)


The title?

"The Divorce Revolution Has Bred An Army of Women Haters"

Let's get something straight right away:

1) One need not hate women to be a marriage striker. One only has to see that legal "marriage" is not for them. They don't even have to see legal "marriage" (LM) as a bad thing to see that marriage isn't for them, or that Wilcox's argument in the Prager University video was severely misleading.

2) It's not just about divorce. It is about the whole process of getting into a relationship and being in LM.

3) One need not hate women to see that most American (or British, or Canadian or...) women are not good wife material.


The subtitle:

The divorce revolution has created a large minority of men who are ambivalent or hostile towards sacrifice, commitment, women, and marriage.

Many marriage strikers are willing to sacrifice. They just aren't willing to make the sacrifices required by today's LM and social marriage for your typical American woman.

Many marriage strikers do make all sorts of commitments. But they are unwilling to make certain bad or harmful commitments. If a realtor was offering you a rapidly deteriorating house that already wasn't meeting your needs, for a seven-figure price requiring a mortgage with a 15% interest rate, and you said "no", would that mean you're "hostile towards commitment"?

Many marriage strikers are not hostile or ambivalent towards women. They just don't see LM as any  benefit to them, even if they're with a great woman.

Is Ongoing Victim Status Warranted?

While searching Twitter for Dr. Laura stuff, it became apparent that the last call she took at the end of today's first hour got on the nerves of several people on Twitter, and likely a lot of other people in the audience who didn't take to Twitter.

If you catch the podcast, it started  at 40:23 and is from "Linn" (not sure of the spelling, but a woman). She's 57, and she said she has two older brothers, one of them being two years older. She went on to say that when she was 11 and/or 12, (making him 13/14), he did some sexual things with/to her for a couple of years, about half a dozen times.

Generally, and it was consistent for this call, Dr. Laura notes that if there is less than four years age difference between teens/preteens and there isn't threats or force or anything along those lines, the therapeutic community tends to look at these things not as abuse, but as mutual messing around out of adolescent or childhood curiosity (although, Dr. Laura noted that a lot of feminist/victim-bent counselors would feed into the caller's perspective of it all being horrendous abuse on the part of her brother).

The caller said she would freeze, and that she knew it was wrong. She also said she'd "blocked out" some of it. Those are the "magic words" for Dr. Laura, who dismisses (as, now, do many therapists) "repressed/recovered" memories. She notes that there are a lot of military people with PTSD that wish they had the ability to repress memories. I'd like to believe Dr. Laura is right, but I also wonder if SOME people can repress memories and others "can't".

Anyway, Dr. Laura noted that they were close in age, and also gave the caller a chance to throw in if her brother had been threatening or forceful or whatever, but the caller didn't. Clearly, Dr. Laura expected that if the caller was entirely a victim (rather than being somewhat curious or horny herself), she would have done something after the first or second time... told someone, screamed, fought with him... something. The caller did say there was a time she walked away, but the rest of the time she said she was "frozen".

Dr. Laura referred to the situation as "complicated". She wasn't "blaming the victim". She was, from what I can tell, trying to depict a difference from reluctant, but willing participation in sex play and actually being forced or manipulated in an assault.

If I understood correctly, the caller waited until she was 45 to write a letter and read it to her brother. If he was truly predatory then he likely went on to abuse others. So that's a lot of time for him to go without anyone calling him out. At some point, someone who has been abused has a responsibility to protect others.

Did Dr. Laura botch this call? I don't think so. I can believe that the caller genuinely feels victimized and is still suffering as a result, but the question is why does she feel that way? Perhaps if she'd gotten the right help sooner, she'd be much better off now. Was her brother a predator, or just a curious boy? All we have is what the caller said, and she said she'd "freeze" and didn't tell anyone. I don't know... if I'd been that age and someone was doing something to me, I know I would  have told someone, unless it wasn't predatory and was mutual. But we're not all the same, are we? 11/12 is a little old to stay silent, I think, unless there's a whole 'nother story to what was going on in that family.

I never had any desire to do anything with my siblings. I never looked at them that way. Nothing ever happened between us. I was shy and modest. But as therapists know, childhood/adolescent messing around does happen between some siblings. It can be wrong without being a criminal or abusive matter.

Trying to Stop the Bleeding From a Bad Prager U Video

Following up on yesterday’s entry on the Prager University video trying to fool men into thinking legal marriage is good for them, I wanted to report that Dennis Prager had the host of the video (Wilcox) on his weekly “Male/Female Hour” that runs on Wednesdays. Having him as a guest on the show was probably planned ahead of time, as Prager frequently does that when new Prager U videos are posted. However, Prager did note that the video has gotten a lot of reaction, much of it negative.

Starting out, Prager said it is a “crisis” that more people don’t want to get married. He does admit that the family laws of most states aren’t fair to men, but he says that in his generation, to be a man meant getting married and supporting a family. Which is funny, because another woman can do that, including legally now.

Brad Wilcox Tries to Sell Men on Marriage at Prager University - UPDATED

On the heels of my most recent post on reasons to get married, there's a new Prager University video trying to fool men into marrying. Prager U is generally a great thing, but Dennis Prager, twice divorced and in his third marriage (but at least he doesn't preach against divorce), is a frequent advocate for marriage and says men aren't really men unless they marry. (That must be news to The Pope.)

Anyway, here's the video featuring Brad Wilcox, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia...

[OK, for the life of me, I can't figure out why Blogger eats embedded YouTube videos so that they disappear. They are both services of Google so I don't know why they can't work together without this happening. I'm getting tired of reposting the same videos to this entry, so I will also include the links to view them at YouTube.]

Here's the link to the Prager University video on YouTube that may or many not still be embedded immediately below. If you follow the link, you can read the comments, which are rightfully trashing the video.



Fortunately, a transcript is provided. So here goes.

Take the case of Doug Taulbee. At age 18, Taulbee worked a minimum wage job operating a press at a factory in Indiana and lived in his parents’ basement. “I didn’t have a care in the world,” Taulbee says. “I didn’t even have any bills.”

But after marrying at 19 and having kids, Taulbee’s perspective changed: “I had to step up and think about others and start taking care of them.” Taulbee quit his factory job and joined the Army, where he made significantly more money and received housing and health care paid for by the military.

Whenever he saw a chance at promotion, he pursued it. It meant more money and benefits for himself and his family. Recently, in a bid to further boost his family’s income, he left the Army to work as a finance manager at a car dealership. He’s now pulling in six figures.

Lovely anecdote. I'd be interested in knowing if Mr. Taulbee stays married, and if not, what the terms of the divorce end up being.

1) How do we know Taulbee wouldn't have developed ambition without being married? We don't.

2) Plenty of men have ambition without being married.

But notice that he "didn't even have any bills" before marrying. So he's young and carefee. Then he got married and had bills to pay. So then he had to work more. What an endorsement!

Men who see no need to marry, or who are reluctant to marry until they make more money, could benefit from Taulbee’s discovery: Marriage has a transformative effect on the behavior, emotional health, and financial well-being of adults, especially men.

Translation: You are forced to stop doing what you want to do and you have to do what your wife says she wants you to do (but she'll probably claim later it wasn't really want she wanted you to do).

Finally! Reasons for a Man to Get Married

Here are some reasons for a man to get married in today's America:

1) He wants to lose control of his life.
2) He wants to lose control of his sex life.
3) He wants to lose control of his career.
4) He wants to lose control of his time.
5) He wants to lose control of his social life.
6) He wants to lose control of his money and finances.
7) He wants to lose control of his home.
8) He wants to lose control of his possessions.
9) He wants to spend his time, money, and energy doing what a woman wants him to do.
10) He doesn't have enough problems to deal with and wants to take on the problems of someone else.



When a man says "I want to get married", he's saying he wants to do those things listed above. He is saying he wants to only ever see naked and have sex with the same aging woman, who may consistently sexually reject him and let herself go, and will suffer no social or legal/financial penalty for doing so. He's saying "I have an abundance of time and money and I don't know what to spend that time and money on. I'm tired of making decisions about my life without having to argue with anyone."

You might also like:

When Someone Tells You That You Should  Get Married

Quiz For Men: Should You Get Married?

Bit By Bit

I could stand to lose weight.

I spend way too much time playing butler, driver, and commuting to and from work to squeeze in much exercise.


My wife's sister's husband lost weight, tracking his steps with one of those special wristbands. (His wife is still obese and he was never obese, but that's another story). So my wife asked me if I wanted one.

I declined. I already know how to eat less and move more.

But after my wife's most prominent ex-boyfriend died suddenly of a heart attack, my wife didn't ask me again; she bought me one of the devices and informed me after the fact. Mind you, this was the woman who insisted on having our most recent exercycle removed from the house because it was "taking up space" (if you could see where it was, you'd  laugh because there was plenty of space). I think I'd used it a grand total of zero times after she insisted on buying it to replace the previous, broken cycle (which I had used regularly for quite a while). One of the reasons, besides my additional time-consuming responsibilities, that I didn't ever use it is that the kids kept playing on it and, in doing so, had removed some parts. I had tried to keep the parts close to the machine, but what was futile. So, the money spent on it was entirely wasted.


My wife apparently thought that by buying me this  wristband device, I would suddenly find the time and will to actually track and input my food consumption and to exercise more. Never mind that from the time I get home until I finally get to sleep late, I'm usually butler to her and the kids.

The other day, I joked about fooling the device by tying it to something else that was mobile. Her reaction made it very clear to me that I was not to joke about the device, ever.

I had previously told her not to buy it for me. She did anyway. And now she expects that I'm going to change my behavior because I have a device I didn't want in the first place. Oooookaaaaay.

If she REALLY cared about my health so much, she'd prepare at least some of my meals, instead of none of my meals. (Remember, she's a SAHM.)

If she REALLY cared about my health so much, she'd make lovemaking a priority, and not a rare and brief thing.

If she REALLY cared about my health so much, she'd change things a bit so I could get more sleep and have less stress.

Of course she has reasons to want me alive. I wait on her and the kids hand and foot. I take care of the finances and mail. I keep the kids from beating her up (when I'm around). I do chores and errands.

But not enough to do anything to promote my longevity herself. No. Only enough to try to get me to add more to my figurative plate while putting less on my literal plate.

An Ugly Truth About Parenting

Have you noticed how many (seemingly billions) websites, magazines, newsletters, books, DVDs, etc. there are about parenting? I'm not even talking about the general stuff about pregnancy and child development. I'm talking about the ones telling you how to deal with problems, how to discipline children, etc.

They don't work.

Well at least, not for all or even most children, and not for long.

If they did work, there wouldn't be so many of them.

Oh, it's easy for someone to stand there lecturing you on how to parent and either you never see them interacting with their own children or it is for a short amount of time, edited. I'm sure they respond to complaints with "You're just not doing it right, or consistently."

But that is not always so. The truth is that no system is going to work all of the time for every child. It may work on one of your children... for a while. Kids adapt. a DVD or a book doesn't. It still tells you to do the same thing it told you to do a year ago. Ever watch Supernanny? Yeah, I wonder how things were going for some of those families a year or two later. Unless your child is stupid, your child anticipates your tactics and adapts accordingly, and being a child is their job. You have a lot of other things to think about in addition to disciplining your child.

This media that promises a peaceful home with well-behaved and well-adjusted children often contradict each other.

Don't ever spank! 
Spank, but with your open hand. 
Spank, but with an object, not your hand, which is only supposed to be gentle and welcoming.

Count out loud to 3 to give your child a warning. 
Don't count as that teaches the child they can screw up twice with no consequences.

Let infants and toddlers cry it out or you encourage them to wake up on the middle of the night and cry until they get attention.
Never let an infant or toddler cry it out; instead, provide them reassurance. 

Cosleeping.
Never bring your child into your bed.

And that's just the earlier years.

I just love hearing about parents or parental figures (usually a grandparent) that "never so much as raised a his voice" in dealing with brats. Sorry, I don't buy it. Either that person wasn't the primary disciplinarian, or the kids were unusually compliant (perfect future cubicle dwellers and fry cooks), or the man was on sedative drugs or the man was secretly kicking puppies when nobody was looking. Sorry, when I'm trying to prevent my children from killing themselves or maiming other kids, I might get a little forceful in my touching or loud in my vocalizations. Oooh, I'm such a bad parent.

Well guess what? There have been some great parents who have raised several kids, and most of them turn out fine and one of them turns out to be a serial killer. Is it really the fault of parenting? Usually not, in those cases. I mean, once it becomes apparent the kid is a sadist or sociopath it is possible the parent could have done them in, but instead the parent risks dead strangers and nasty remarks rather than going to prison themselves.

My siblings and I were raised in the same home, by the same parents. Yet each of us was very different even at early ages, as my father tried to explain to our elementary school principal.

I recently realized something that should have been so obvious to me before. Not even counting sociopaths and sadists, parents can't raise their children without inflicting some (emotional, psychological) harm, even if minor. You get any adult into therapy, no matter how great of a childhood they had and no matter what great and successful and happy people they are now, and there will be something that you will discover that their parents did wrong that still has a negative or limiting impact on them. None of us is perfect, and none of us is going to be a perfect parent. The ugly truth is, it is just a matter of which mistakes we're going to make in raising our children.