Thursday, August 07, 2008

Role model

When reading about NBC's plans to televise the various portions of the Olympics, I noticed that it was showing some events on Oxygen. That particular channel is not on the normal rotation on my den television set -- in other words, the remote skips right over it. So I went to add it today, just in case there was something interesting shown there in the coming two weeks.

When I clicked to channel 66, I was rather surprised by what I saw.

I had dropped in on the middle of a marathon for something called "The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency." Sigh. I lead such a sheltered life in some ways; I had never heard of this program.

I believe there are two major portions to this show -- at least that was my conclusion after a few minutes of viewing. One is shots of male models without their shirts on. Guys, if you need something to wear, I've got plenty of t-shirts. They give them to me for running in races, and I have some spares.

The other part concerns Dickinson, who apparently bills herself as the world's first supermodel. Well, we all need some claim to fame. Dickinson generally insults everyone in sight, including her business partner. "Thanks for your money, now get the bleep away from me." The models generally are treated like cattle. They are all too fat, or don't work hard enough, or something. Ever been around a person that was so unpleasant that you couldn't wait to go screaming into the night? Janice is that person, squared, at least on camera.

I guess this show is advertising for the agency, which was a start-up venture. But then I noticed that Dickinson was the executive producer of the show. She wants to be portraited that way. It takes a lot of guts, or something, to reveal yourself to be that unpleasant a personality before a couple of million people.

The land of reality television is pretty scary. Remind me to crawl back into my hole and stay away from it, pronto.

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