Ron and I like to watch ABC's "Wife Swap," in which participants trade places with counterparts from what are generally radically different backgrounds. Usually the show is exploitive but harmless: we see super-permissive parents get switched into excessively strict, structured households, that kind of thing.
Last week's episode was less benign than usual, placing lesbian mom Kristine in the home of strait-laced, conservative Christian mom Kris, and vice versa.
Kristine appeared to get on reasonably well with Kris's husband Brian, but the same couldn't be said of Kris's relationship with Kristine's partner Nicki. In an early segment of the program, Kris disparaged Kristine and Nicki's partnership, impugned their motivation for wanting to be legally married, and asked Nicki why she couldn't just pretend not to be lesbian. Really. No kidding.
Things went further downhill during the couples' meeting at the end of the show. Kris said that she feared Kristine would molest her daughter--I wonder if she'd have suggested that a straight woman might molest her teenaged sons?--and that Kristine and Nicki were depraved. This reduced Kristine to tears, as you might expect. (I can respect a polite expression of religious objections, but Kris's inflammatory, outrageous statements only deserve an indignant "How DARE you?!" )
But while I'm angry at the exploitation of both couples, I can't understand why anyone ever participates in these shows. Really, I'm totally baffled. Can anyone possibly expect any good to come from reality TV, especially if there's no compensation for the participants?
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