Housewives of the rural Midwest

“This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.”

-Edward R. Murrow, speaking in 1958 about the future of television

Family and friends know I’m not one to mindlessly flip on television. But even I have weak moments and one of them led me to pick up the remote and flip until I landed on a show called Real Housewives of Orange County. I presume the program is reality television’s response to Desperate Housewives, a show I’ve also never seen. If you read the marketing hype, you might believe Real Housewives attempts to chronicle the lives of a half dozen “average” women who cope with life at middle age by partying on yachts, spending all their husband’s (or ex-husband’s) money on clothes, hair and spray-on tans, dangling jewelry in their ample cleavage, and hiring psychotherapists to fix their broken children.

Pretty “real” stuff, allright; has Hollywood ever got me pegged!

I peeked at the show’s web site and discovered each character has a blog. (The parallels are scary!) Here’s an excerpt on turning forty supposedly written by “character” Tamra: “No one wants to get old, but it is definitely better than the alternative! I try to live a healthy lifestyle, work out, and eat right, and the Botox helps.” (By the way, Tamra was thrilled by the diamond-encrusted Rolex she received from her beau, though her “friends” were jealous.)

Time for a “reality” check, dear readers. Real Housewives of Orange County is the chronicle of a half dozen clueless, desperate women coping with chronic discontent, purposelessness and spiritual emptiness by injecting chemicals and plastic into their bodies with the belief that happiness can be found in what’s reflected in their mirrors or by how much candle power their jewelry emits. There’s nothing “real” in this hour of reality television, proving Mr. Murrow’s point: wires and lights in a box combine to create the illusion that something is there. But nothing is.

Real housewives, at least the ones who live in middle America, don’t get weekly pedicures (what’s the point, we’re wearing wool socks), don’t ride to the mall in limos (a tractor? Maybe. A pickup? Certainly!), don’t inject Botox into our foreheads (those syringes in the fridge are for the barn animals), and we don’t define hard times by the value of our wrist watches compared to the value of our neighbors’.

If I learned anything from my recent foray into reality television, it’s this: I better get back to the library quick!