Reality television itself is the lowest common denominator of entertainment.  If you think about it, television is supposed to be someplace where you escape from reality.  It’s the home of Star Trek and Law & Order and other shows designed mostly to let you think and relax.  Sure, there’s news and weather and sports, but on the average weeknight, more people watch the regular networks than many things on cable.  It’s worth observing, then, what sort of programming inhabits the networks.

Fox is the home of low-brow reality television, and they’ve developed another insane entry for their programming schedule.  Set to premier on January 3 is an adoption game-show called “Who’s Your Daddy?”  This show isn’t as offensive as it sounded when I first heard the title – all I’ll say is that I pictured paternity tests.  It deals with an adopted woman winning $100,000 if she correctly picks her father out of a lineup.  It’s a reality show with willing participants who are willing to embarrass themselves for a chance at a hundred grand.  Compare this to the actual paternity tests conducted on Mary Povich or Jerry Springer – shows where the participants have nothing to gain except embarrassment.

So what difference does it really make?  For Deborah Capone, a single mother with an adopted daughter, it’s a big difference.  Her e-mail campaign against the Fox show focuses on “turning adoption reunions into a game show.”  She worries that Fox’s reality show “takes an intensely personal and complex situation” and then “transforms it into a voyeuristic display.”  For the director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, Adam Pertman, it’s an equally appalling notion.  “The very idea of taking such a deeply personal, complex situation and turning it into a money-grubbing game show is perverse, destructive, and insensitive to other.”  But, where is their outrage towards Springer and Povich?  Why is Fox being singled out for its spectacularly stupid premise while the trash television kingpins continue to largely do whatever they want?

Perhaps some advice is in order for Capone and Pertman: don’t watch!  Whether or not people participate in or watch this show is not your decision to make.  Sure, the premise may be hurtful and insensitive to hundreds of thousands of people, but then so too is watching some of the awful sitcoms the networks offer.  At the end of the day, it is still up to the viewer to decide what to watch and what not to watch, but more importantly, it’s up to the participants in these shows to decide if they want to be degraded and humiliated for a hundred thousand dollars.  It is their decision.

But, that’s what this movement comes down to: yet another effort by people to protect others from themselves.  If we are going to try and stop people from doing stupid things, how on earth did “The Real Gilligan’s Island” ever get a green light or even air?  ‘Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire,” “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” or even the obnoxious and overtly popular “Survivor” all deal with people put in unnatural situations and embarrassing themselves to varying degrees.

The sad fact of our society is there are countless thousands of people willing to embarrass themselves and do anything to end up on television, and sadly, millions of other people enjoy watching them do it.  And admittedly, sometimes it is entertaining.  Who hasn’t watched “The Apprentice” and enjoyed the backstabbing among the contenders?  Who doesn’t enjoy Simon’s barbs to would-be singers on “American Idol?”  Or who has watched “Fear Factor” and wondered whether they would be capable of eating puréed worms or jumping from a thirty story building for fifty thousand bucks?  We live in a society where such voyeurism is enjoyed and people enjoy being watched.

One day network executives will stop with this reality television garbage, but they’ll have no incentive to stop if shows like “Who’s Your Daddy” get free publicity and attention to the point that people want to watch it regardless just to see what all the noise is about.  And they certainly won’t have any intention of stopping if their reality programming – cheap and relatively easy to produce – continues to rake in viewers and the advertising dollars.

We live in a society were people are losing their inhibitions.  In some cases, it is not a positive thing.  But, when it comes to what can or cannot air on television, if they people are willing participants in the reality television program, who cares?  No one is forcing them to go on television and act like fools, just as no one is forcing you to watch them do it.

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