On your way to becoming America’s Next Top Person With a Brain in His Mind

Last night Jon and I indulged in two hours of patently horrible reality television whose target demographic is homosexual men. I guess I am misleading you when I say that we indulged because that makes it sound like we don’t ever watch patently horrible television when the truth is that we indulge EVERY NIGHT. We continued, let’s say.

Fall is quickly becoming my favorite time of year because it hails the return of all the great reality series whose producers have figured out what makes reality television horrible and great in the first place: editing, editing, editing. Reality television is great in the same way that it was great that George Bush denied saying that he wasn’t that concerned with Osama Bin Laden, and then later we got to see the replay of him saying those exact words, over and over again. He was like a good boy Christian on the “Real World” caught on tape with his pants down moments after saying that he would never take his clothes off. George Bush with his pants down is not the image I wanted to leave you with, and I apologize for that. SHIVER.

Not all reality television has figured out how to balance the great and the horrible, but the ones that have are so fun to watch. The good ones, including “America’s Next Top Model,” know that you have to cast people who don’t mind driving the train wreck of their own public demise. This means finding people with no discernable I.Q. and then setting them loose in a confined space. All the producers have to do it edit together all the contradictions and hypocrisy and ass hanging out of bikinis. Has television been any easier or cheaper to produce? And has my soul ever been so withered and devoid of the Spirit of God?

Last night we watched two episodes of a new Bravo series called “Manhunt.” It’s basically “America’s Next Top Model” for men and the editors here have followed the great/horrible formula with much success. I don’t think there has ever been a television series that has been this overtly produced for a homosexual audience: it’s basically dozens of hairless, fit men dancing around in their underwear for an hour. We laughed, we cried from laughing, we cried. Perhaps we loved it so much because Jon and I love homosexual men. If we weren’t married and heterosexual we would totally be homosexual men, for sure. Yesterday at Costco a couple of homosexual men CUT ME OFF IN LINE, but I loved them so much that I didn’t mind. In fact, I wanted to shout, “NO ON PROP 3!” to let them know that not only would I give them my place in line, but I would also give up the sanctity of my marriage so that they, too, could marry. Because that’s how it works in Utah: The sanctity of my marriage depends on someone else.

The best part about “Manhunt” last night was the part when the first four men were eliminated, one of them being the guy who had earlier in the show said that he wanted to rid the male modeling world of the stereotype that male models don’t have “brains in their minds.” During his exit interview he shook his head and said that some of the remaining men didn’t deserve to be there, but that it didn’t matter. He said America would figure it out and decide for themselves. That’s when Jon paused the TiVo and said, “Well, buddy, you can’t really trust America. Half of America wants to re-elect George Bush. Are you sure you want to trust this decision to them?”