Tennessee

There’s a relatively new reality show on MTV called FM Nation, and while I didn’t think there would ever be a show that could top The Bachelor or Temptation Island, the genius editors at MTV networks have somehow exalted unscripted TV to undeniable brilliance.

FM Nation follows 3 groups of young idiots as their stories unfold over the course of a Saturday night, and each week the show travels to a different city: one week Scottsdale, Arizona, the next week Boulder, Colorado, and so forth.

Jon and I have been watching this show every week with splendid abandon, laughing ourselves silly at a safe distance.

We loved the girl in Wichita who got doused with “scolding” hot water during a wet t-shirt contest. We cried at the four fake-titted blondes who “rocked Scottsdale” by stripping nude at a Carl’s Jr. drive-thru in order to get a free hamburger.

We thought life couldn’t get much better when a group of kids in a scooter club gathered on an overlook as one of the scooter members tearfully read a farewell to another scooter member, something along the lines of “I could only hope to be as loving and gentle and kind as you, other scooter member” just as the other scooter member angrily warned a random stranger to “Get the fuck away, motherfucker.”

This is Dooce TV if there ever was Dooce TV.

And everything was going along Doocily until MTV decided to hit a little too close to home. And when I say close to home I mean MTV decided to film an episode in Little Rock, Arkansas. Does MTV need to make it that easy for themselves?

I knew MTV would find the most inarticulate hee-hawing bubba-dink to represent Southern youth. Just like CNN will find that one person in Tennessee who can’t just say, “The tornado demolished my house,” but has to sort of clink-clank his words and explain, “The bitch done got flipped over.”

I don’t believe everyone in the South is stupid, I just know that everyone in the South sounds stupid, myself included, and last night’s episode of FM Nation did nothing to ameliorate that sad, sad reality.

Last night I was one of those roving Southern idiots looking for fun on a Saturday night. I was the girl with no boobs and a classic Southern frizz-fro trying to win a bikini contest. I was the sexually-ambiguous girl racing cars in the dirt, proving that “girls is bad ass too.”

And even though I’d seen the preview for the episode several times and knew that the drag queen’s wig was going to fall off mid-performance, I still hoped, hoped, hoped that maybe it would just stay on, please stay on, that the drag queen’s friends would figure out a way for the wig to stay put.

But the wig done got flipped over.