Bridezillas, the cable reality show that could alternately be titled Crazy Bitches Getting Married and Treating Everyone Around them Like Shit, leaves no stereotypical stone unturned. For African-American brides, the show plays bad hip-hop elevator music in the background. Southern brides get a twangy faux-banjo. And now they've squeezed two bad cultural cliches into a single, horrible bride: meet Karen, who is a) Jewish and b) from Staten Island. (Those of you who watched the breathtaking True Life: I'm Getting Married might have some idea what to expect here.)

Karen relished her Bridezillaness and was so bad that her antics were stretched into three episodes. Within those episodes, she threatened to fire bridesmaids, got thrown out of her own bachelorette party for insulting the club's bouncer, announced that she didn't want any "poor people" to come to her wedding, and cussed out a vendor in Hebrew. But why should we tell you about Karen when the internet has kindly provided some evidence that you can view on your own? You might want to watch this clip through your fingers - you know, like a horror movie.

 

And here's the part where she flips out on the bouncer (who she keeps calling a doorman).

Fox TV's reality dating show More To Love is about much more than body size.

More To Love's opening shows tiny girls in bikinis with the caption: "The average girl on reality TV is a size 2. The average American woman is a size 14." More To Love's format is simply The Bachelor Plus Size: a total cheesy ripoff. But, like most reality dating shows, it fed my need for vicarious romance. At first, I was fascinated by the marked difference between these larger women and the usual skinny-beeyotch personalities; these women were self-deprecating instead of self-aggrandizing, weepy instead of hostile. Still, as the season went on and "Fatchelor" Luke started falling for Tali the Israeli, I totally fell for the interfaith dating storyline.

I wouldn't call myself a The Bachelor completist, but I have watched my share of the series. I never, not once, heard daters speak about their own religions. My husband and I wondered why how this extremely important subject seemed to never come up. We figured these discussions end up on the cutting room floor -- perhaps too controversial for prime time. Suddenly, More To Love starts discussing Tali and Luke's "different backgrounds." "Uh, yah!," I exclaimed to my husband, "'different backgrounds', 'different cultures'... can't they just come out and say, 'she's Jewish?'"

Well, to my surprise and joy, that's exactly what they did! Last night, on prime time TV, America got to watch an actual instance of a Jewish person getting serious with a non-Jew. Though my philosophical and religious beliefs are different than Tali's (and my husband's different from Luke's), my anxieties and experiences with meeting my husband's non-Jewish family were very similar.

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The world media is in a bizarre race these days. Everyone wants to get as many details as possible on President Obama's new plan to end the conflict in the Middle East. But let's face it - we all know the drill by heart. We shall experience an optimistic vibe all around, then a summit conference full of nice photo ops of smiling leaders. A week later, they will come out of the summit with a short statement of goodwill, and a long list of excuses to explain why, once again, the conflict cannot be solved.

Maybe it's time to think outside the box. Maybe it's about time to stop counting on our leaders, and end this fiasco in a different way. Here are six easy ways to end the conflict in the Middle East:  

The Judgment of Solomon - Obama sits with the Israelis, the Palestinians and a map. Suddenly he gets up and shouts to Rahm Emanuel, "Bring me my biggest sword, and I shall hew this country in half. Each of you shall receive a half." The first side to cry out and give up will win the land, as they have proven they love it more. The problem with this idea is that the Jews will have an unfair advantage -- after all, they already know the story, and besides, I'm not sure Obama owns a sword.

Heads or Tails - Of course, the matter is much too serious to solve with a simple coin toss. We will have to use real heads and tails. All we need is a suicide bomber on a horse . The problem with this method is that Jordan will object. They know that if the Palestinians lose, they might suggest "Double or Nothing".

Reality Show - Harness the ancient wisdom of American TV. Produce the biggest reality show ever. Even if it sucks, it will be better than NBC's  fall schedule.  We can make it "Big Brother" style, but with 10 million participants. Each week, viewers from around the world will eliminate one resident. Granted, the show will end in 2099, but at least that way we know for sure it actually will end.

The Basketball System - Just like in basketball the land will go to whoever catches it first. All we need is one Iranian A-bomb to lift it up.

I Never - Trust our leaders to negotiate, but make them do it in a bar. Everyone sits around the table. One leader goes first, making a true statement that starts with "I never..." For example, "I never agreed to joint sovereignty  in Jerusalem". Then, any leader who agrees with what has just been said -- drinks. After nine or ten rounds, everyone will at least have a much better attitude. An additional a twist could be to not allow anybody to go to the rest room before there is a signed agreement. This is going to be the first peace treaty sponsored by Budweiser. The heading will read: I love you, dude!

Violence - The good old-fashioned way. It's worked for so many decades, why stop now? Only this time instead of sending troops/terrorists and killing hundreds, let's give the leaders the opportunity to fight for their own life in the ring. At the end of that fight either we will have a arbitrament or we will get rid of leaders who aren't strong enough. it's a win-win situation.

This piece originally appeared on The Huffington Post and is reprinted with permission.

Jason Mesnick, the single father from Seattle, won over female hearts all across America last spring on The Bachelorette when he lost to the surprise pick, snowboarder and walking fashion-faux pas (pink shoelaces, anyone?) Jesse Csincsak. It was clear, to me at least, that Bachelorette DeAnna Pappas was not really looking for a nice guy to settle down with, but rather a fun, adventurous dude. Granted, DeAnna was a Greek Orthodox girl from Georgia, but, in my mind I was wondering how she could pass up the nice Jewish father.

The outpouring of female interest in Jason led to hundreds of women calling into ABC to request that he be made the next Bachelor. And it worked: on January 5^th all of the many adoring and mostly female fans got their wish. Jason started off with 25 beautiful women, many of whom had watched Jason get his heart broken by DeAnna and felt like they knew him already. Take, for example, stalker Shannon who seemed more enthralled by getting to meet a pseudo-celebrity then actually developing a genuine and organic bond with the man himself. She, along with many of the other women, seemed to come on too strong (there was one woman who admitted she'd made an Oprah-inspired "vision board" covered with pictures of Jason so that she could visualize their life together). There was also my initial favorite Jillian, a bubbly brunette from Canada who caught Jason's attention with her theory on how you can tell everything about a man by what condiments he puts on his hot dog.

But, in the end, there were only two women left standing hoping to get that final rose. In one corner stood Molly, an initial front-runner who shared the first overnight date with Jason in a tent early on in the season. It was clear Jason was digging her. She was extremely confident and poised seeming always to be reciting words she had memorized from a "How to Win the Bachelor" handbook, rather than speaking from the heart. In the other corner stood Melissa, a former Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader who laid her heart on the line and admitted to always being the "dumpee." Melissa was cute and petite and seemed to be the most genuine and least psychotic of all of the women.  Most viewers seemed to be rooting for Melissa - myself included.

Now what happens next is all a blur. ABC chose to make a few very strategic - and in my opinion, very selfish  and inappropriate - choices all in the name of drumming up viewers.

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This fall, NBC will debut a new reality show, Momma's Boys, which features three sets of mothers and sons. Each mom, who is described by the network as "overprotective," chooses a potential mate for her son from a pool of available women cast by the show. According to the New York Post, Momma's Boys, which will air its premiere episode on December 16, has already been rescheduled twice "with sources speculating that NBC moved it out of its originally scheduled airdate of Oct. 29 because the network didn't want the racially charged show to air so close to the then-upcoming presidential election, in which race was a hot-button issue."

Why might race be an issue in this show? Well, the pilot episode features a mom named Khalood Bojanowski, who describes herself as Iraqi Catholic and is selecting a partner for her 21-year-old son JoJo. Khalood reportedly says during the program:

I cannot have a black one; I can't have an Asian one; I can't have a fat-butt girl. Nooo! No Jewish girl! No way, no way! I cannot stand them! I'm sorry, but I can't handle them. It has to be a white girl.

Oh, great. And now we're back to the "Are Jews white?" argument.

And how, you may ask, did this story leak out before the episode even aired on television? Well, Ms. Bojanowski apparently called the cops in her town of Washington Township, Michigan, informing them she might need police protection. Bojanowski's home was broken into recently, and she claims it was a reprisal for the comments she made on the show--which would be odd, to say the least, considering no one but the cast members and production people have seen it yet.

"The Hills" may be the ultimate in guilty pleasures. With all the fights, gossip and fashion, how could you resist? Apparently, the New York Times can't resist either. Their style blog got a hold of Whitney Port and sat her down for an interview, during which they offered her a job after she commented that she was getting "too old" to be working at Teen Vogue. Gawker didn't seem too happy with the Times blogger's gushing affection for Whitney, or his spontaneous job offer, but I say, why not? If starring in a reality TV show gives her enough cred to be called a "style muse" then why shouldn't she move on to a more prestigious gig? And if that doesn't work out, she can always come work for Jewcy!

I’ve watched very little TV in the past few years. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not some hacky sack fancier with a “Kill Your Television” bumper sticker and serious concerns about mind control. In Manhattan the service was too expensive, and in Greece there was only one English-language channel, which played Stallone movies, like Tango & Cash, First Blood, and Demolition Man, on endless repeat. (I wonder where Europeans get the idea that we love violence?) A consequence of this sporadic viewing is that whenever I do tune in, I’m blown away by how much worse it’s managed to get in the interim. As abysmal programming goes, A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila is the Marianas Trench.

Cast your mind back to December, when Time’s Person of the Year issue sported a mirrored cover honoring “You”—the You of YouTube, the Me of MySpace . . . . The magazine devoted a page to a 25-year-old named Tila Tequila, who had parlayed the distinction of being a popular denizen of MySpace into something like a career in showbiz. While Miss Tequila pursues numerous avenues of artistic expression—wearing bikinis while down on all fours, for example, and singing thuggishly aggressive come-ons in a twig-thin voice—her only demonstrable talent is for raw self-promotion, and Time politely wondered, “Does she represent the triumph of a new democratic starmaking medium or its crass exploitation for maximum personal gain?” Last night, the dating show A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila (MTV, Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET) arrived to offer a reply. “Crass exploitation,” it giggled, continuing, “Duh!”

A Shot at Love sets 16 men and 16 women in pursuit of the heroine’s affections. Yes, Tila is proud to call herself bisexual. . . . [F]ar be it from me to question the passions that stir Tila’s heart and loins. I’ll leave that to You, the collective author of Wikipedia and its ilk, who has coined the term “MySpace bisexual.” The recreational lexicographers at UrbanDictionary.com bring the utmost delicacy to defining the term: “A girl who makes out with other slutty chicks at parties and then claims to be bisexual because it’s trendy to say so and gets people’s attention on myspace.”

From Ahmadinejad at Columbia to Tequila on TV, why are we solemnly asked to meditate upon questions a mollusk could answer? “Does she represent the triumph of a new democratic starmaking medium or its crass exploitation for maximum personal gain?” Is there even a difference?

I might have overlooked this latest insult to our collective intelligence but for an article in The New Atlantis, “Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism,” which received attention this month on NPR and was condensed in the Wall Street Journal. MySpace.com, the networking site that gave Tila Tequila her fifteen minutes of fame—or should I say shots of fame, since the effects will wear off as quickly and leave as nasty a hangover—caught the attention of the intellectual public, but James Bowman’s essay on heroism, modernism, and utopia, in the same issue of The New Atlantis, is every bit as important. Reading Bowman’s piece returned my thoughts to something I’d just read in Paul Fussell’s brilliant The Great War and Modern Memory (yes, I’m fond of quoting Fussell):

[E]ven if those at home had wanted to know the realities of the war, they couldn’t have without experiencing them: its conditions were too novel, its industrialized ghastliness too unprecedented. The war would have been simply unbelievable. From the very beginning a fissure was opening between the Army and civilians. Witness the Times of September 29, 1914, which seriously printed for the use of the troops a collection of uplifting and noble “soldiers’ songs” written by Arthur Campbell Ainger, who appeared wholly ignorant of the actual tastes in music and rhetoric of the Regular Army recently sent to France.

Granted, Tila Tequila would probably be a hit at a USO show, but her popularity seems emblematic of a widening gulf between soldiers and civilians—though a different one than Fussell identified in the case of World War I. Fussell’s two Britains were the one that had seen trench warfare firsthand and the one that knew it only from the exhibition trenches in Kensington Gardens, which Wilfred Owen called “the laughing stock of the army.” The latter Britain had been misled about the war in many ways: “Few soldiers wrote the truth in letters home for fear of causing needless uneasiness. If they did ever write the truth, it was excised by company officers, who censored all outgoing mail.”

Notwithstanding Brian De Palma’s complaints, Americans have unprecedented access to uncensored news about the horror of war. What many of us don’t seem to have is an interest in the questions, both moral and practical, that this news raises. We grow shallower and more narcissistic as the army’s selflessness is cast in sharper relief. There are times when one can’t help feeling that much of the popular opposition to the war—as distinct from many undeniably well-reasoned criticisms of its conduct—stems from the fact that it offers a harsh and ever-present rebuke to the other America, more concerned with collecting online “friends” and luxuriating in hilariously bad pop culture than with being heroic. Bowman writes:

“Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes,” says the Galileo of that heretical utopian, Bertolt Brecht . . . . He was making a point very much like that of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. We don’t want Tom Doniphan any more than we want Liberty Valance, since both are free men, unconstrained by the laws and regulations of compassionate social engineers. We may have lost confidence in the ability of those engineers to design a perfect system, or even to live up to their own high expectations of humanity, but it is easier to go on clinging to their fantasies as if we believed them to be real than to submit to the despair of admitting to ourselves that life is still for us what it was to our great-grandfathers who believed—or at least pretended to believe—that there was nothing in it more important than being good.

For those of you who aren't addicted to crappy reality TV like I am, let me fill you in on what's been happening this season on Big Brother.

The difference between Big Brother and the more successful The Real World franchise is that while both features people who are taped 24/7, The Real World is edited down into 22 half-hour episodes. With an online feed and a partnership deal with Showtime, Big Brother allows for neither editing nor downtime. That means that the show captures not only the mundane but the scandalous, and viewers tune in hoping to catch the good stuff.

This season has been rife with stupidity and intolerance. If you haven't been following the show closely, have no fear. One clever MySpacer came up with a handy diagram to show the prejudices of everyone on the show.

One particularly odious contestant, Amber, has made no secret of her dislike of Jews, saying that she can tell a Jew by their last name and they're all "selfish" and "greedy." You can see video of her antisemitic rant here, complete with audio feedback.

There's something complicated about the video below.  The media trend Mika Brzezinski is decrying doesn't thrive on those who say, 'Now this is what's really important.'  The Paris Hiltons, the American Idols, and reality television shows exist because the ridicule-and-failure-of-others-as-entertainment serves a purpose.  Nietzsche wrote:

The community feels refreshed by cruel deeds, and casts off for once the gloom of continual anxiety and caution. Cruelty belongs to the most ancient festive joys of mankind.

The Simon Cowells, Judge Judys, Trumps and Chef Ramsays, the bad parents, supernannies, and the bawling Hilton each belong to the canon of America's cruelty spectacle.  Nobody thinks any of it really matters; in fact, one's own ridicule of the story is integral to the ritual.  The moment these dramas become relevant in any serious sense of the word is the moment they lose their value and disappear from the headlines.                              

Might House Have A Clue As To Why Tuesday Night TV Is So Boring?My husband and I just subscribed to Netflix after tiring of each others' incessent need to channel surf. We didn't readily admit to this being the catalyst, but we all know how annoying it is to watch another person take out their ADD on the very object whose desiny is to amuse you.

It's a tall order.

After being a Netflix member for over a month now and signing up for the 3 movies at-a-time deal, we've also discovered that this is a waste of money since you'll never receive a DVD more than once a week. Each week, we aspire to beat the system somehow and yet it always averages to be the same scenario playing itself out: If we watch our movies during the week and send them back right away, chances are we will not have another DVD in time to watch for the weekend.

But of course the question remains that if TV is far better than movies these days, as Newsweek tells me, why are we so dependent on our Netflix for viewing satisfaction?

Our DVDs are a default for us. This means that if there is nothing on the telly (sorry been watching too much BBC "The Office" on Netflix), we mumble the word Netflix. Some shows are staples in our home: "The Office," "Heroes," "Lost" and "South Park" being at the top. Then there are the fillers like "Shark," one of fifteen "CSI" locales, and "Law & Order."

Last night, our filler was "House." Since the time slot's major competition is "Pussycat Dolls Presents," it was a no-brainer. Still, watching singer Dave Matthews play a musician who happens to be brain-damaged didn't feel too much of an acting feat, but at least we got to loathe Hugh Laurie's House character a bit more and leave the episode feeling someone had been more of an asshole that day than either of us. Did I mention that Personal guilt runs high in my house.

But back to Tuesday night TV and the search for a show that doesn't entirely suck. We rounded out the night with the "48 Hours Mystery" show. It's a bit better than "Dateline: To Catch a Predator" in that it's less likely that the perv next door or someone you once met at a bar will be exposed on national TV as a pedophile and leave you permanently scarred emotionally.

Anyways, the particular case featured on "48 Hours" was also one that I had followed since it was a local story involving a former NYC socialite who'd been found brutally beaten and murdered in her Cape Cod home with her 2-year-old daughter bending over her mother's slain body, attempting to suckle mommy's breasts. The Christa Worthington case attracted national news coverage, but here in Boston it was nauseatingly covered ad infinitum.

Naturally I know when I watch these unsolved murder cases, I go to bed thinking the killer will be coming after me that very night because the rational part of me has been extinguished. And given the restless/criminal action going on in my apartment as of late, perhaps cuddling up with a innocent, non-violent book is a healthier psychological alternative.

Then again, TV really is like decent junk food and as are well aware of, even the bad junk food still is better than going hungry.

KISS frontman and Reality TV star Gene Simmons on Celebrity Big Brother's Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty's encounters with racial intolerance while filming the show:

What’s the big deal? Some people are racist and some are not. Either you show reality, or you don’t.

Yeah. Like suck it up Shilpa. No really. Please do. And while you're at it, SHOW reality man.