The “Outing” of Reality Television

With the Writers’ Strike in its second month, the new year is guaranteed to bring us even more bad media. Reality television shows expect to proliferate — bad reality television even moreso. I’m placing Cher and her lesbian daughter, Chastity Bono’s attempt in that category.

This from the UK’s Daily Mail,

They have, according to friends, put aside the years of bitterness that once characterised their volatile relationship.

But this is not simply a case of – admittedly belated – family bonding. The mother and daughter are about to turn themselves into the latest reality TV stars in America.

Their pair’s somewhat unlikely thesis, the Mail has learnt, has them starring as ‘celebrity counsellors’ to those struggling to find the courage to admit to their parents that they are gay.

And it is a subject about which they have bitter experience. When Cher discovered the then teenage Chastity was a lesbian, she threw a tantrum and booked her daughter into therapy in a bid to ‘cure’ her.

Given that this is America, they have decided to christen the reality TV show, a tad tastelessly perhaps: Coming Out With Cher And Chas.

The normal parental response to a child’s admission to homosexuality is usually the same as Cher’s — We want to “cure” them. But my question in all this is: Who’s coming out?

Put aside, if possible, the laughable notion of Cher as a “celebrity counselor,” and consider the thought of sticking a camera in a mother’s mug while she’s forced to grapple with her child’s “coming out”? Just how much “reality” do you think you’ll get from a father who knows America is watching his every response, much less the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation? If anything, a show like this would put parents on the spot and force them to act PC.

While the liberal media and homosexuals regularly employ the “It’s nobody’s business what goes on in the bedroom” line, it’s amazing how often they want to air their bedroom antics publicly. If lifestyle choices are so private, then why do we need a TV show about someone’s? Besides, if homosexuality is so “normal,” as we’ve been led to believe, then why does the media and the homosexual community go to such great extremes to celebrate the “outing” of gays? If anything needs to be “outed” it’s the agenda that drives this machine.

There’s multiple sub-plots to a story like this, but most of them are very, very sad. On the surface, this is a tragic re-enactment of the all-too-familiar celebrity flameout, the desperate gasp of the rich and famous grappling to retain the spotlight. Is it any more obvious how tragic the effects of stardom can be? But even more apparent is the media’s complicity in the incremental re-shaping of societal moors. MTV’s Tila Tequila proved that the channel formerly known for music and Viacom are stooping to incredible lows to garner viewers. My guess is that “Coming Out With Cher And Chas” will find a home there.

I can’t help but feel that what’s really “coming out” here is not homosexuals, but the voyeuristic, pathetic interests of the producers and the patrons of this crap.