When Reality Really BITES!

Ah, Heidi Montag.

The controversial, plastic, duck-lipped, attention-loving blonde is a co-star on MTV's hit reality series, The Hills, and has become a bona fide celebrity in the past couple of years.
Even we are amazed at how huge Heidi Montag has gotten - both in terms of celebrity and regarding her chest area. Seriously, the way those things grew is truly remarkable.


She's the former best pal of the show's star, Lauren Conrad, and the current girlfriend / fiancee / girlfriend fiancee and now WIFE of that slime ball and master manipulator Spencer Pratt.

A Colorado native, Heidi Montag has become a complete media whore in recent years, doing just about anything for attention - if you're reading this celebrity gossip site in the first place, you probably noticed.

That's all good with us, really.

After all, what would The Hollywood Gossip even be without Heidi Montag to talk about? She's doing her best to milk her 15 minutes of fame for all they're worth, too - she's got a CD and her own fashion line coming out, and rakes in the cash for staged bikini photos like no celebrity in history.

Think Heidi Montag is trying to steal the spotlight from former BFF Lauren Conrad just a little? It's working.

We look forward to following Heidi's career (if you can call it that) as it continues to reach new lows, or highs, however you look at it. Same with Spencer Pratt. Reportedly, they got married on November 20, 2008, in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Whether that's true or whether it's just a stunt, you can guarantee they are cashing in on it and will continue trying to make money at every turn for the foreseeable future. Which is all that matters.

Bless your hearts, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt. We love to hate you, but you play the game to perfection.
(from the website "Hollywood Gossip")
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I'm sitting here on the tenth floor looking out from my floor to ceiling windows this Saturday morning watching the rain pour down, listening to some internet classical radio, drinking my coffee and indulging in a new practice of NOT turning on the idiot box first thing to get my day started. It's been nice to watch Big Momma Hawk teaching the baby hawks to fly and hunt, to listen to the birds chirpping each morning and just take in the view from my perch. Real life can be a pretty wonderful thing if you just take the time to open up to all of it. I'd rather watch Big Momma Hawk do her thing with the kiddies than listen to Fox and Friends or Morning Joe any day of the week! But now to other matters of the day.

Pretty bleak out there, right? Here is this woman, of no apparent talents at all, struggling as mightily as possible to stretch out her 15 minutes of fame even if it scars , mutates, degrades and possibly kills her. For what? Oh yes, money and fame, what else is there in the world that matters so much!

Pre- 13 cosmetic surgeries Heidi with husband and fellow

 "The Hills" cast member, the universally loathed Spencer Pratt

WE, my generation, has done one horrific thing for which there will be a reckoning when we all go to see God (HIM or HER), whatever form they take, when our reality llives and fame are over and done with. That thing we did is to peddle the idea of manufactured reality as the real thing.
 
This concept is a direct decendant of the very first writers of propaganda. I'm sure it goes back to the early days of man, when the original sportcoat drew a picture on his cave wall of a huge Sabre Tooth Tiger he killed, when it was in fact more like an oversized, prehistoric mouse he skewered. The fact that he was sharing the burnt  offerings of mouse entrails with his "date" for the night, under the guise of looking at what really were his "etchings", also plays a part in the place we find ourselves today.

The original and the "improved" model

        From chic to freak in 13 easy medical steps!

We are bombarded with the most unreal reality in our culture today. A huge portion of network broadcasting is made up of reality programs that are anything but! You place a camera crew in your house, or they start  following you around, and what transpires  in every instance is NOT TRUE. Everyone but a complete fool changes their behavior once they know they are under the ever watchful eye in the sky! They wish to be seen in the best possible light. Or they have other manipulative motives behind them. That is, unless you have serious mental heatlh problems, or were either Romulus or Remus and nutured by wolves.
 

The list is long and growing. Housewives of NYC, Jersey Housewives, The Hills, MTV's The Real World, Bad Girls, Temptation Island, The Batchelor, The Bachelorette,  The Jersey Shore, Jerseylicious (If I lived in Jersey, I'd move), Wife Swap, The Nanny, Supernanny, every show on the Learning Channel about little people, fat people and  dog whisperers, Jon and Kate Plus Eight, Survivor, The Apprentice, 16 and Pregnant , Big Brother and it goes on and on and on.

 

All of these "reality" shows are well known for having producers who purposely try to reach ratings heaven by setting up certain people in these shows against others. They manipulate the people and the situations into which they are placed. IS THAT REAL? NO! But these shows purport to be an actual and accurate picture of what is happening.

They want extreme entertainment value and shock value, contrived drama, but also the  veneer of being objective, and yes, the respectability of being considered a documentary. It's this veneer of REAL LIFE being played out that gives it credibility to  viewers, but the manipulated drama and smut brings in gawkers in record numbers and creates the morning water cooler gossip. And the advertisers dig it. That's why we watch so much of this stuff . Mostly they advertise on programs that are a soft version of auto wrecks. Now everyone can rubberneck without slowing down traffic. How very modern and inclusive.
 
You see, writing real programs with excellent scripts and hiring excellent actors and actresses costs money, lots and lots of money. Everything about the process of creating programming is very expensive, and that's when you are able to find decent talent. It's exponentially more expensive to write and produce quality shows like The Wire, The Sopranos or Nurse Jackie. So when networks and producers can cut their expenses by 95% and rake in that now regained cost of production difference as pure profit you can understand why it's here to stay and going to increase as the years go by. It takes no effort, money, or originality only the skill to see whose buttons to push on the next episode.  Hey, there are plenty of people who live that experience every day, especially when they watch over the actions of their children from 7 to 15!

Now we've gotten to the point that these people with absolutely no talent and no skills other than being pretty or rich or some producer's friend have become stars. I call it the "Snookie-eration" of our society. Every person on these reality shows knows millions of people are tuning in to watch the weekly train wreck. They take full advantage of this fact just as much as the producers of these programs. The lunatics therefor are taking over the asylum! They have all become owners of their own cottage industry that is based on an unreal reality. And millions of Americans between the ages of 18 - 45 lap this stuff up like a kitten does cream. Just take a gander at any grocery store check out and you'll be invaded by US Magazine and the dozens of others like it bleeding useless information and scandalous photos of these contrived stars. Our culture, and our children, are being inculcated with it.

Why is this a bad thing? Real life can sometimes be exceedingly boring. Real life can also be incredibly rewarding and special and exciting in ways tv producers could never imagine. That's because real life just happens, and creates drama  that you and I have to live through. The problems , sacrifice, work, human relationships and personal commitment don't end when the hour long show is over. Neither does the joy of being alive, or the misery, it's your choice most of the time.

Our "unreal-reality" generation of kids!

Our children are not learning this fact. They are now hiding from real life by increasingly running to these packages, if you will, of fake people and phony lives, brought to them almost exclusively by the networks and cable providers. They play video games like Grand Theft Auto and then wonder why they have to spend 50 years in prison for shooting someone. To a frighteningly growing number of kids today these contrived progams and video games are  real and represent how life is actually lived. They are quickly beginning to live as zomboids devoid of feeling and creativity, or even analytical thought. They are becomming a generation of Pavlovian test subjects. And it's my generation's fault.

It also allows for play actors like Glenn Beck to rant and rave like the lunatic manipulator he is and have his gross exaggerations and lies be accepted as truth. We've been prepared for this by the greater portion of broadcast media. Many in this country have no conception of what objective truth is, or how to reason as real human beings.

You see, it should never be a difficult task to determine what the truth is about the world, your world. Confusing at times, yes, especially for young people. The filters and blinders start hitting us all from birth and become part of us. But this "Unreal reality" thing is a new phenomena.

WE, as a society, are willingly suspending disbelief, not just as it applies to some well written, well acted  fictional TV or Movie drama, but in regards to our daily lives. It's troubling to say the least. But you can see it more and more each day. And God help us if this unreal world takes over the actual one. Things are moving in that direction. Just think of the movies  THE TRUMAN SHOW, BROADCAST NEWS and NETWORK and the messages they presented about the powerful and dangerous role all types of media  increasingly play. I have to admit, everytime I watch Glenn Beck crying on camera I think of NETWORK.  I'm waiting for Sybil the Soothsayer myself.