Will Loretta Lynn Sing at the Royal Wedding?

The first Royal Wedding I can recall watching on TV was Princess Margaret's, in 1960.

My very first ever gay husband and partner in insufferable precocity and I took one look at the freshly coiffed and titled Lord Snowdon and smiled delightedly at each other, wriggling with pleasure at the acuity of our budding and insufferably precocious babyGayDar.

Hours passed, and still we sat there, held in the enchanted thrall of the snowy image on the little black and white TV, thrilling to the Voice of All Events of Great Import, Winston Burdett.

We knew The Story. We knew that Margaret's Real True Love had been Group Captain Peter Townsend, but she couldn't get married unless her sister The Queen said she could, and her sister The Queen couldn't because Peter was divorced, and, and and...

(Walter Cronkite, in those days, was the Voice of Things that Happened, but to voiceover anything involving crowned heads, popes, or requiring frequent repetition of the word "catafalque," it was Winston who slapped on the oversized headphones and went to work).

I'm going to fast forward past a handful of also-rans in the Royal Wedding Pageant, the matches of various non-Windsors and a few minor Windsors and Windsor-adjacents, not only because my fingers would get really tired (as would your eyes if you even tried to read it all), and not only because the Windsor ones are likely to be more familiar to most of you, but because let's face it, the British royal family gives awesomer wedding than anybody.

So fast forward to 1973. Alas, Prinnie Royal Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise's wedding to future ex-husband Captain Mark Phillips was something of a disappointment. Anne's dress is best described as "quintessential WindsorWear," and PrinnieRoy being deep in the throes of her "dispense with all that" mode, the whole thing ended up being pretty blah. Mark even turned down a title. That was all the Story there was to be gotten out of that one.

All remained quiet on the Windsor wedding front until 1981, when the firm beat its own personal best several times over and set the bar not only for weddings, but any and every kind of royal/papal/catafaulque-havin' occasion you can think of.

Prince Charles, having been commanded by his true and undisputed Queen, and her own true and undisputed lovable old bigot of a mother (who held in equal disdain anybody who was not directly descended from Queen Victoria, herself, or both) to obtain forthwith the services of a uterus, finally put on the itchiest of all his royal uniform jackets and on July 29, dutifully married the hapless 19-year old docent of a functioning female reproductive system indicated by the Queens Elizabeth.

The pedigree of Doctor-Certified Virgo Intacta Lady Diana Spencer was, it was archly murmured in certain circles, at least marginally, and possibly even somewhat, more authentically royal than the rather fanciful lineage of the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg- Glucksberg-Saxe-Coburg Gothas, at least relatively, with some even going so far as to suggest that the Spencers' hereditary titleage might be just a little more hereditary and a little less, um arbitrarily decreed.

Diana also got points for being at least a distant enough cousin from one side of the blanket or another, to effect some needed expansion in the Royal Gene Pool, which had, over the years, become just a smoosh limited, and as a result, had produced, um, Prince Charles.

From the minute that big ol' wrinkly dress, with its big ol' wrinkly 25-foot train was de-clowncar'd from the Crystal Carriage and wrestled to the ground by poor little India Hicks, it was on like Donkey Kong!

Every female viewer from the age of two to a hundred and two, whether she admitted it or not, even to herself, wanted to be that blonde girl, who, like Scarlett O'Hara, was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm, as were women who saw her on that day. In that dress.

Of course we all realize now, with the clarity of hindsight, that it was just a particularly adjective-rich chapter in a very sad and sorry tale, made all the sadder by its utter lack of uniqueness.

While the pomp and spectacle and glitter have yet to be even seriously challenged, much less duplicated, by even Vanisha and Amit, the exact same Story was told, over and over, day after day, all over the world, as it has been since the beginning of time, albeit usually sans crowns.

The creative license whimsy of some biographers notwithstanding, there are really no parallels between The Story's Charmilla and Abdication subplots.

It's safe to say that 9 out of 10 historians surveyed agree that David, known popularly as the Duke of Windsor, and briefly as Edward VIII, is typically painted as something of a wuss.

Yet he was able to overcome his wussiness enough to ball up, call the bluff of an entire government, a centuries-old religious institution, and a full battalion of medal-encrusted, lorgnette-wieldin', crown-wearin' old farts and fartesses, and renouncing the very throne upon which he sat, take to the airwaves and proclaim himself liege man of life and limb to his heart's Queen, a sort of proto-Real Housewife from Baltimore named Wallis Simpson.

While the Act of Settlement of 1701 may ostensibly have been all about preventing the unthinkable possibility that a papist buttock might descend upon the British throne, that wasn't the only agenda. The gene pool thing had already become something of a concern, and while ActoSet closed some sectarian doors, it discreetly opened some very generously-sized windows.

It was, therefore, not Mrs Simpson's US citizenship, nor even her lack of a royal title, that constituted the actual constitutional impediment to England's acquisition of a Queen Wallis, but the fact that she was a divorcee, and in 1936, the Church of England had a zero-tolerance policy on divorce.

Because the sovereign is the titular head of the Church of England, a divorced person couldn't be "received at Court," meaning they couldn't even receive an invitation to the Royal Party Barn, so the question of an heir to, or occupant of, the throne marrying one was a non-starter.

Between 1936 and 1970, when Charles met and fell in love with Camilla Shand, several things had changed, including things like Prime Ministers, Archbishops of Canterbury, and the Church of England's official position on divorces and people who got them.

Even if they hadn't, Camilla, though her virgo intacta boat had probably been sailed for a minute, had neither married nor divorced anyone, Charles was not King, and there was nothing to say he couldn't be if he didn't dump his boo.

In fact, the only people who objected to Camilla were a handful of fusty old relatives with a penchant for brightly colored coat-dresses, but Charles lacked the testicular fortitude to stand up to this (literally) toothless opposition and marry the woman he loved.

Anyone who is inclined to read the Duke of Windsor for trash will not suffer from scarcity of material. He was a bigoted asshat, and those who strive to defend him from accusations of being a Nazi sympathizer are invariably reduced to arguing that he was too stupid to comprehend that Hitler was a way worse bigot.

In the area of girlfriend-related absence of balls, however, which Prince of Wales wears the wuss crown is a matter of public record.

Oh, but we were not talking about all that. We were talking about the Mother of All Royal Weddings, and the vision, forever engraved in our collective consumer consciousness, that was Diana.

What neither we nor she knew was that while gloriously arrayed as The Ultimate Princess Bride, she was, in fact, a Traditional Sacrificial Virgin. That was the secret part of The Story. At least for a while.

Her secret was that like the Shameful Saga itself, she wasn't a bit unique. Her appeal lay, not in the glamorous gowns, or the glittering jewels she wore, nor the pageantry that became the backdrop of her life, but in her accessibility.

The covert marketing operatives who do these things had them some skillz. They knew, as most of us know now, that identifiable and accessible will trump pure aspirational every time. Adam DiVello, when casting for Laguna Beach, did not cast his net for the most beautiful girl in the local high school. Being a Royal Family consultant-grade marketing genius, he chose Lauren Conrad, and the rest is history.

The cheeks of sweet young blonde girls do turn a very pretty shade of pink when they blush, they do have an endearing way of ducking their heads and lowering their lashes and casting shy, sidelong glances. Thus, Diana was first and foremost, familiar.

Every person who ever saw her, in person or on TV, had seen all those things before, in a neighbor, daughter, a niece, a classmate, a girlfriend. There was not one single high school or college, attended by three or more young blonde girls, that could not boast at least one "Diana lookalike."

Hair salons turned out dozens of them daily. Like LC, Shy Di became aspirational because she was ordinary.

All that changed when she grew up - into a woman who was most extra-ordinary, who turned the trite old narrative into whose pages she was so unceremoniously plopped, into an epic that though chilling and tragic, was unique, because it was her very own, and because she, too, and in her very own way, was a marketing genius.

Diana's wedding was so over-the-top and iconic that it was all we were thinking about when Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson. Who among us can honestly say that we remember that dress, hmm? Yeah, that's what I thought. Footnote to The Story. Maybe a sidebar for the first 50 years or so.

Though Prince Edward's marriage to Sophie Rhys-Jones earned itself a place alongside Prinnie Anne's in the Royal Wedding Hall of Boring Shame, Ed might have had the right idea - why even try to compete? It's not his Story.

In 2005, eight years after the accidental assassination of the sweet blonde girl who grew up to present a very real threat to some very profitable industries, Charles' handlers and management bent over backwards to avoid occasion for any comparison to his first wedding, an impossible task, though it turned out being way more about contrast than compare.

At his first wedding, a billion hearts chorused awe and adulation. At his second, a billion shoulders shrugged an overwhelming chorus of indifference.

The only thing that kept it from the Boring Shame Hall was The Story.

At last, thirty-five years after he should have done it, Charles stood at the altar and pledged his troth to the woman who had inexplicably hung onto it through heartbreak, marriage, bearing and rearing of another daddy's babies, and divorce.

Few romantics were hopeless enough to be moved.

Many young people grumbled that they didn't see much sense in people bothering to get married when they were that old, and a hefty chunk of old people gruffly replied that in this particular case, they didn't see much sense in it either.

It smelled an awful lot like a sort of minor contingency afterthought.

Should the Queen prove to have inherited her life expectancy gene from her father instead of her mother (who died in 2002 at age 206 or thereabouts), and precipitously die without warning or enough advance notice to allow for even a fast-track abdication, the country would then be left in the awkward position of having to choose between a reigning sovereign openly cohabitating with a mistress - in the era of TMZ and telephoto lenses, or a Royal Wedding starring a reigning sovereign and a divorcee with whom he had been openly cohabitating.

Having officially established, some time ago, an unofficial Royal Family position of mild embarrassment on subjects like Edward VII and Mrs Keppel, no one wanted to be the one to decree that one would be preferable. Or not.

A pretty subtle distinction, to be sure, but in a culture where subtle distinctions are both obsession and art form, as Tony Soprano would say, "Whatcha gonna do?"

So a deal was cut, and an Archbishop appeased. One wedding today in return for an agreement of no crowning anybody Queen in case Something Terrible, all deities forbid, were to happen tomorrow.

If such rumors are fact, it's overkill seldom seen outside the Pentagon marketing office, a caution whose abundance is rivaled only by restaurant waste.

It's been extremely unlikely for a while now that Charles will ever be King.

As the Queen stands poised to sail into her 85th summer, in apparently excellent health, this would seem to indicate that she will, in fact have inherited her mother's longevity, and that the chances are good that she will continue to reign over us for at least another 15 years or so.

Charles is already in his sixties, but this alone would hardly be an impediment to his making what is, after all, a lifetime covenant, at least in doctrinal terms.

The real issue is that Charles hasn't been very popular since he - well, practically since he hit puberty. As soon as he became a teenager, it became apparent that he is blessed with neither the telegenic charisma of his son, nor the iconic stateliness of his mother.

Any inclusion of a young Prince Charles in lists of Cute Boys compiled by teen magazines in the 1960s was done, if at all, out of pure courtesy or as an afterthought, and most frequently both. A courteous afterhought.

If you were Adam DiVello, holding an open casting call for a love interest for Lauren Conrad, and a young Prince Charles walked in, unless you knew he was Prince Charles and you were open to a whole new direction for The Hills, you'd be yelling "NEXT" before he dropped his headshot on the folding table.

He is neither handsome nor charming, neither an inspiring speaker nor possessed of quick wit. He's solidly and stolidly unappealing and dull.

Yet such is the strength of loyalty and love of the monarchical tradition among the vast majority of the British public, that all that might have been forgiven - even today, in the information age, where "reading well" on TV can trump a multitude of sins and failure to do is the only unforgivable one.

Sheer respect for the institution and the history it represents might have been enough to make Charles not only an acceptable and accepted monarch, but a popular one.

As was the case with his grandfather, George VI, his very bumbling imperfection might have endeared him to his subjects, much in the same way as Diana's blushing EveryGirl endeared her to the world even before she had sat through her first class in "media relations."

And back we come to The Story. We have no way of knowing whether Charles ever wanted to be King. All we know is that he probably won't be, because The Story will have rendered the idea infeasible.

The only reason England has a monarchy today is because enough of the British public is pleased enough with having a monarchy - and pleased enough with the monarch - to keep on paying for it.

Unlike warlords and captains of industry who operate above such petty considerations as public opinion, the British royal family, like celebrities everywhere, owes everything to it.

Diana attained a level of public popularity unprecedented, not only in living memory, but in the history of media. Even years after her death, she's in a category all by herself.

As a character in The Story, she's the innocent Princess victim. And Charles is the villain, the Evil Prince, who deceived her, shamed her, defiled her, and doomed her.

He's the anti-monarchist's Dream King.

It may have withstood nearly a thousand years of wars, and plague, murder and famine and intrigue and warming pan babies and Oliver Cromwell, but it was Diana to whom the head that wears the crown was obliged to bow that day in August, when newspapers blared, in Second Coming Type "SPEAK TO US, MA'AM!"

Her Majesty may have thrown up a little bit in the Royal Mouth, but she did it. She did it because it was her duty. She did it because, according to her deepest beliefs, the monarchy is a sacred trust that must be preserved. So she went out there and she preserved it. But she wasn't preserving it for Charles.

She will have realized long ago that if the crown ever sits on her son's head at all, it will rest there only for the time it takes to draw up the papers to get it onto the butter-yellow and oft-over-gel'd locks of Diana's son, Diana's heir. That's what she bowed to.

And That's The Story of this Royal Wedding.

It's got nothing to do with all that gushing and simpering about Kate Middleton having an ancestor that worked in a coal mine, entertaining though that is to watch. (Yes, I'm easily amused, and I own it. Embrace it, even).

They've stopped short, but only barely, of hauling Loretta out of retirement and flying her over to sing "Coal Miner's Daughter" from the choir stall in Westminster Abbey.

(We probably should shut up about that now and not give them ideas).

The Story of the young couple themselves would put a meth head to sleep. Boy meets girl in college. Boy dates girl. Boy takes break from girl. Boy gets back together with girl and proposes.

I mean, whoa. Stuff like that just never happens.

Kate Middleton, whose striking and most intriguing resemblance to Lauren Conrad may be pure coincidence and entirely unrelated to marketing, seems like a very nice woman.

At 28, she's hardly a blushing young ingenue, and having lived with William for at least some of the eight years they've known each other - and they've known each other in the regular people sense - none of this stuff about random Moments of Destiny in some field some place.

I give her props for wasting very little time in going on public record to squash the crap about keeping a poster of Wills on her bedroom wall before she'd ever met him, or since she was 12, or any of the various Faux Stories that have been preceding Royal Weddings ever since the one about little Princess Lilibet gazing out at her little boat-rowing cousin Prince Philip-of-Greece-but-only-because-Greece-had-recently-borrowed-their-royal-family-from-Denmark.

What Kate will do with her cultural bully pulpit remains to be seen. She's not obligated, frankly, to do anything with it.

There would be no shame in her simply living what she will have now instead of a life producing the requisite quantity of issue, doing her share of the ribbon-cutting and charity event appearing, and trucking along like that until it's time for her to be fitted for her Mother of The Whatever gown for her kids' Royal Weddings, and those of her grandkids' after that.

Those who expect her to "follow in the footsteps" or "carry the flag" of Diana don't realize what they're saying, and will be horrified if they ever do, so let's hope they don't. Nor could Kate ever do such a thing, even if she were "troubled" enough to aspire to it, which I certainly hope she isn't.

In this Royal Wedding, the Story isn't about Kate. She's just the bride.

The Story of this Royal Wedding, like the Story of the monarchy itself, is the same as it was in 1981.

Diana's son, who will be the next King, is getting married. And The Story goes on...

Sister Wives: Real Plural Housewives of Somewhere in Utah

The exciting race to be the first network to hit the airwaves with a reality show about polygamy is over, and TLC won!

Patriarch Kody Brown describes the family's faith tradition affiliation as "Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints," but don't expect Warren Jeffs Little House on the Prairie dresses or 19th century pompadour and braid hairstyles.

The family wears modest, mostly unremarkable "modern" clothing, though they sometimes put their own "twist" on it (In some scenes, Christine rocks a fuchsia spaghetti strap top over a long black sleeved crewneck) and when they're not discussing religion or polygamy, have more or less normal speech patterns and vocabulary.

Number One Wife Meri has one daughter, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Number Three Wife Chirstine.

Meri has received the Gift of pain-free baby tooth extraction.

Twice in the first segment of the show, Meri tells us that having someone ready to step up and raise your kids in case you die is is "definitely a plus to this lifestyle."

Um, Meri, next time you're on line, try googling "godparents." Those stultifyingly monogamous Catholics have had the contingency parent thing in place for a while.

Janelle, Wife 2, works outside the home. 6 kids. Only wife who wasn't raised in a polygamous home.

Christine, Wife 3, has 5 kids, and pregnant with what we may assume is another one. (Though don't try to tell me that the TLC execs are not praying for quintuplets, at least)

She always knew she'd be a plural wife. As a teen, she turned down single men who "asked my dad about me" because she "just didn't want them."

"I honestly wanted sister wives more than a husband for a good time in my life," she says.

She specifically wanted to be a third wife, because it "sounded the easiest." She didn't want to be a first wife, because she "didn't want to be married to a guy by myself," and she didn't want to be a second wife, because she "felt like (2nd wives) were a little wedge in the relationship."

She informs us that it is said that if there are problems with a 2 wife family, the conventional wisdom is that the solution is to obtain a third, to "even things out."

The kids were home-schooled until 5 years ago. Since then, they've attended a private "polygamist school" school "for our people."

Christine seems to be the principal homemaker for the family. She does not have a toaster, and makes toast in the oven, because
"More people die from toasters than sharks every year."

Her preferred interjection is "Darn it" or "Gosh Darn it."

Throughout the show, references are made to a "big announcement" Kody plans to make to the family that night.

Turns out that he is "courting" a potential 4th wife, a 30 year old woman named Robin, who "grew up in the lifestyle."

The wives acknowledge that they had a feeling that there was someone else, but the "big announcement" is the first time that the children are told about it.

Robin has children from a previous marriage, and apparently there has been some kind of joint play-date at some point, because dad presents the idea by asking the kids if they remember Robin and had fun playing with her kids. How would they like to have Robin's family join theirs?

The response is enthusiastic. One of the younger children doesn't quite get it, so Kody tries again, but it is Christine who gets the message across that Kody hasn't proposed yet, so the whole Robin thing must be kept on the DL for now.

A couple of the older kids acknowledge that it might be "weird" or "different" at first, as they've all grown up with three moms, but no one has any objections.

Meri doesn't deny that "jealousy issues" exist, but hopes she can get over it.

Janelle says that when Kody first told her about it, she had a "spiritual witness" that Robin was special.

This is the "first courtship" in 16 years, says Kody. Adding a foruth will be a "big deal."

Christine cops to being "kind of hesitant," because she "likes 3 wives a lot." She doesn't want to be a boat rocker, she says, and she doesn't want her boat rocked. "If it hapens," she adds, "she just has to be absolutely amazing, otherwise it might be a little difficult."

Robin, who lives four miles away from the family, has been courted by Kody for about 4 months. The number 4 seems to crop up a lot in this story arc. They are shown going on a date. Robin says he's her soul-mate.

Wives in this lifestyle, Kody points out, are comfortable with another wife, but not another girlfriend.

The day after the premiere episode airs, it is reported that the family is being investigated for bigamy. Coincidence? I think not.

Let's just hope this doesn't mean there won't be a Season 2.

The Bachelor/ette: Is Roberto Really Hot? Ethnic Ambiguity, Demographics, & Beauty

Call me a love-grinch if you will, a jaded Debbie Downer of romance, an old fuddy-duddy who just doesn't understand the young folks and their new-fangled ways, but even setting aside my somewhat limited capacity for suspension of disbelief with respect to reality shows in general, I have just not been able to jump on the rainbow-and-My-Little-Pony-festooned bandwagon of misty-eyed wonder at the latest candidates for the Great Lovers of All Time Hall of Fame.

Judging from the media and prevailing chatter, online and off, the level and intensity of admiration and adulation for this couple is unprecedented in Bachelor History!

The range of opinions, the ongoing battle between belief and suspension of disbelief, the pragmatists and the faithful, invariably plays out into a much more full-bodied entertainment experience than actually sitting there watching it.

Full disclosure: Although I do have it as a tivoid timer, and dutifully make a sincere effort to watch every episode in its entirety, I admit that I have, on more than one occasion, fallen asleep.

The human mind - or at least my allegedly human mind - can only endure a limited amount of helicopter rides and pageant-worthy comments about the importance of family and being real, and the phrases "here for the right reasons" and "one on one time" can cause my eyes to close and my head to fall faster than Pavlov's pet pupdog.

Maybe I don't enjoy actually watching the show much, but I do enjoy listening to people who enjoy watching it, I think I called it a "cultural phenomenon" in the previous rant.

The Bachelor is one of the most thoroughly and unapologetically ethnically and culturally homogeneous shows produced in the US today, clearly targeting an ethnically and culturally homogeneous audience. And that's OK.

I have no intention of going off on any lofty tangents about the myth of multiculturalism in the US of Modern Today, I'm just saying that it's a network show, with the potential for some high-dollar ad rates, and business is business.

Everything we see - or don't see - on the show is the result of a business decision. From casting to story arcs, to wardrobe and makeup, as with any commercial entertainment product, it's about the money.

It's also, as RealitySteve pointed out in his season wrap-up, about the drama.

Previous years had made it very clear that the future of the franchise depended on the show's ability to compete with the increasingly popular trashy reality shows, many of which were, ironically, actually inspired by The Bachelor, according to Mark Cronin, who, in an interview a few years ago acknowledged that the whole "Skankapalooza of Love" franchise was inspired by his wondering:

"... what if the Bachelor was actually a big character? The Bachelors tend not to be big characters. They tend to be nice, eligible men. Hunks, maybe, but that’s not character. A good character is someone who says funny stuff and who has a weird, whacked-out lifestyle. So, really, we wondered, “What if the bachelor were a crazy lunatic?..."

That's when he and partner Cris Abrego decided to call Flavor Flav...

Fleiss et al responded by ramping up the drama - and the sleaze - accordingly, with the MesnickDump Heard Round the World, the lame but nevertheless effective Rozlyngate, and even going so far as to insert an "insurance policy" early in Ali's season - the famous Jake vs Vienna bout, which predictably raised viewer interest in the show to unprecedented levels even as it dashed whatever hopes Jake might have had for "ever working in this town again."

Anyway, back to viewer reaction. This season, I was especially struck by the division of opinions about Ali's options along demographic lines.

Generally, girls and young ladies of the "mainstream" US demographic were going wild over him, while their counterparts in the rest of the pie chart, well, weren't.

US mainstream demographic viewers seemed to perceive Chris as more "husband material," often referring to him as "real," and "family-oriented," while Roberto was seen more as the "fling," an embodiment of an thrilling fantasy of sampling strange fruit, so that one will have lived a little before settling down and nesting oneself in that weathered-wood-picture-frame-and-matching-dadface environment, the idealized version of the culturally familiar, featuring a less physically attractive but more "realistic" partner.

Outside that mainstream demographic, while the numbers might be lower, perceptions were predictably the opposite, with Roberto viewed as only modestly handsome, at best, and about as interesting as a pile of sawdust, certainly no competition for the exciting and cinematic dream of Chris and Ali, stereotypical blonde couple, living out a charmed life in an eternal - and yes, "exotic" - Norman Rockwell painting.

As one viewer put it:

"She shd hav a afare w Roberto so she wil have sum memoris cuz he is HOT n SPICY but don get carid away cuz he wil so brake her heart, Chris is the 1 she shd marri cuz he wil aprecate her"

Variations of this sentiment abounded among Ali's demographic sisters, even among the Old School contingent who spelled most of the words right, with the phrase "not that into her" bandied about quite a bit.

As a rule, I am not a big fan of critiques and comments on peoples' physical appearance, and I intend no unkindness to Roberto in saying this, but it is simply a fact that - well, let me try to present it a little more politely:

Just as many mainstream demographic young men expressed the view of Ali as attractive in a "girl next door" kind of way, while their sisters viewed her as having an "accessible" kind of beauty, Roberto tends to be perceived by the larger chunk of earth residents as very "boy next door."

But return to that US of Modern Today context, with seismic demographic shift in full swing, and Roberto has a "look" that is extremely popular with one of, if not the major viewer segments - those mainstream demographic females 18-35, who tend to view him as "exotic," the stereotype of the "Latin Lover," yet assimilated to a fault - "diversity" in an acceptable dosage, as highlighted by the remark about his mother cooking "Spanish things I don't know the names of."

It's that demographic shift, the ologists would tell us, that is responsible for the corresponding shift in the prevailing "standard of beauty" embraced by that mainstream demographic.

While the society is still largely socially "segregated" along ethnic and cultural lines, that has to do with a purely cultural change, and cultural change tends to prefer a slower pace.

When we talk about things like "standards of beauty," we're talking about something that goes a little deeper, even less likely to reflect any conscious choices, something that touches on primordial proto-caveman instincts.

Here's how the ologists would, and frequently do, explain it (and believe it or not, using even more words than I am):

In the case of the US population, it simply means that as a larger percentage of the population becomes more ethnically heterogeneous, peoples' ideas of what is beauty changes in order to increase their likelihood of finding a mate and reproducing sooner, thus preserving the species.

The US/Western European standard of beauty is currently in the process of widening to include what has become a currently popular advertising buzzword, the "ethnically ambiguous" look.

Now of course the preservation of the species does not really depend on this event. It is just one of those sort of leftover things we don't really need anymore but are still there in or biochemistry, kind of like the way some populations have body hair.

Originally its purpose was to keep them warm - the same reason their even more pre-historic ancestors had it - and many other species of mammals still have it today.

But many ologists believe that the reason some humans hung onto it for a few more million years was because they got into stuff like more organized societies, written language, science, etc, a few millennia later than the other boys and girls and thus continued for a longer time to need something to protect their skin from thorns as they wandered around in the bush gathering berries or hunting bison or something.

Others point out that the only people who still have it tend to be from colder climates, so it was always about keeping warm, and that the later adapting of all that stuff was coincidental and/or weather-related, but whatever.

The point is, they still have it now, and they don't need it - any more than they need any unconscious and/or involuntary perceptions of blondes or "ethnically ambiguous" people as more or less attractive in order to prevent human extinction.

It's that kind of thing - against the backdrop of that vortex of change - that makes all this interesting.

Plop the whole thing down into another population, one that is NOT in the throes of a major demographic shift, and there's nothing to see. In a traditionally heterogeneous population, you'll get some of the same "split" along those old lines of "my tribe bestest," but you'll get that today and 150 years from now, and in a solidly and eternally homogeneous population, anyone who did not conform to that single standard of beauty would never be cast in the first place.

But with a population in transition, we get stuff like this:

While the current twin ideals of blonde and ectomorph still hold sway, with both blonde AND ectomorph being almost a guaranteed winner, even though Ali is blonde, we did not hear her referred to as "hot" by male and lesbian viewers of that mainstream demographic anywhere near as much as we heard their sisters and gay male brothers use that adjective when referring to Roberto!

If the viewer-expressed adulation of the undisputed audience favorite set me to musing and pontificating on relative standards of beauty and changing faces of a population, and clearly it did, since I seem to have gone on about it for several pages, watching the undisputed Queen of Roberto worship, Ali herself, fawn over her Chosen One should have been more fun than it was.

So enchanted was Ali by her perception of Roberto's physical appearance that on more than one voiceover occasion that she expressed misgivings about the possibiliy of a relationship with him on the basis of his being so much more attractive than herself that she felt insecure, as if he belonged to some kind of higher aesthetically-pleasingness-based caste.

Once I got past the sheer sadness that anyone would feel that way about themselves, I could not help wondering what Roberto thinks about that.

Even if she didn't say it directly to him during shooting, he will surely have heard it by now.

Every viewer who was ever asked to prom, or worse, proposed to, because someone thought they were "exotic," or even that they were so nice to look at that they didn't really give a damn about the rest, is going to be asking the obvious question with me:

Just who is more likely to break whose heart here? I'm just sayin'...

We have no way of knowing whether their post-show photo-ops, some of which reach Speidi-adjacent levels of sheer cheesiness, actually reflect a sincere mutual attraction.

Internets, checkout lines and water coolers alike are positively trembling with an unprecedented groundswell of certainty expressed by such an overwhelming swath of (mainstream demographic) viewers that Ali and Roberto are not like all those other Bachelor/ette couples, that their feelings for each other are not either superficial, they are in Real Love with a capital L, and they are going to live happily ever after.

I certainly hope they are right. I hope that happens to everybody. Who doesn't?

But let's face it. One of the primary sources of amusement afforded by this show is the wild absurdity of the premise best illustrated by the episode (at least in Bachelor seasons) where this dude buys an engagement ring, and tells us that he intends to propose marriage to somebody tomorrow, he just doesn't know yet to whom.

By season's end, the couples have, with luck, spent a total of a few hours in each other's company without the chaperonage of a camera crew.

With the understanding that most romantic relationships do begin because one of the parties feels some degree of physical attraction for the other, and that millions of people live out perfectly happy lives without having a single relationship, romantic or otherwise, that millions of other people would not call "superficial," what chance do any of the Bachelor couples have?

Have any of the ones who are not Trista and Ryan ever wondered how their stories would have played out if they had met each other at a friend's house or a cooking class or the neighborhood gym?

Do any of them ever wonder if they might have "made it" if their romance had not started out as a "showmance?"

Real Housewives of New York Channel Harold Pinter

I was all set to do a nice little recap of this episode. It looked so promising. Ramona has been in the throes of a major Renewal this whole season, and she has invited the Housewives on a Caribbean getaway to celebrate it.

At first, it was what you'd expect. The girls get tipsy. They bicker. Alex gently tsk-tsks, her role on the show has been reduced to Den Mother, the token grownup. Ramona proudly displays her bikini collection. Bethenny gives everyone little swag bags of beach-appropriate personal care products. This displeases Kelly, who feels it is impersonal. Actually, Bethenny's very existence appears to displease Kelly more by the minute.

Perhaps seduced by visions of reality show fame on a scale like that enjoyed by Real Housewife of New Jersey Teresa Giudice, Kelly proclaims that Bethenny is a ho-bag.

Bethenny excuses herself and accompanies the Renewing Ramona, liberally fortified with Pinot Grigio, to the neighboring Hooters boat where the two ladies enjoy some Turtle Time.

Sonja announces that she smells cat pee and retires for the evening.

Meanwhile, back in New York, Jill and The Countess, who did not go on the trip, have dinner. Jill announces that she will go down to the Caribbean and surprise Ramona. The Countess declines to join her.

Kelly takes photos of the girls on the beach. Bethenny cooks dinner, and at some point during the dinner, the spirits of Pinter and Ionesco descend and possess them.

They all mount the loa and are subsumed in a whirling vortex of non-sequiturs, the most intelligible of which is Kelly accusing Alex of being a kabuki-dancing vampire and revealing that she threw up because Bethenny is trying to kill her and went after her girls and Gwyneth Paltrow.

I mean, really. It all just goes down hill from there. They all take turns being Stanley.

Alex and Bethenny try to resist, but only succeed in dissolving in a fit of helpless giggles.

In intermittent flashes of lucidity, all agree that Kelly needs help.

"You couldn't write it," declares Sarah Jessica Parker, who is inexplicably this week's guest on the Aftershow. "Not even the finest actor..." she trails off, and Andy shows us a preview of next week, when Jill will arrive on the island to surprise the Renewing Ramona, and no one will be glad to see her.

Real Housewives of New York: An Epic Episode!

Jill fears that a member of her household staff, the little chihuahua dog she employs to deep clean her sinuses with its tiny, prehensile tongue, has a digestive ailment, so she calls a veterinarian to come look at it while she wipes chihuahua dog mistake off her furniture and the paravetic shoes.

The doctor examines the trembling exploited little thing, and declares it to be in good health.

Bethenny goes to Alex's house for lunch. She says that Alex, who has made a quiche, is a relief to her because she is low maintenance and does not have any citrus. While the girls make salad dressing, Bethenny reveals that she is engaged. She says it is hard for her to commit and she will keep her pregnancy a secret for now.

Meanwhile, in the Hamptons, Kelly and her daughter share trying to understand the instructions on a box of pancake mix.

Ramona and her daughter go to a sidewalk cafe for dinner. Avery, the daughter, asks for foccacia with prosciutto, ricotta and truffle oil. It's not on the menu but she wants one. Ramona says that the restaurant is her home away from home. She can't remember the name of what she wants, but thinks it has eggs and may be something like an omelette.

She reveals that she is going through a general renewal process and wants to renew her marriage vows. She wants her daughter to be her maid of honor. The daughter says she would rather just watch, but reluctantly agrees. Ramona says that although Avery is only 14, she has become a woman mentally.

Without warning, the New Jersey Housewives appear and warn the public that menstruating women must not be allowed to make pasta sauce because they will spoil it.

Back in New York, the Countess, with Kelly in tow, is looking at "permits."

(Note: a subsequent viewing with subtitles turned on revealed that she was looking at apartments).

The Countess reveals that she is accustomed to a sophisticated lifestyle after being married for 16 years.

She is surprised by the price point of even small, insufficiently Countess-like downtown apartments in the 7-8K rent range, but Kelly tells her that it is a more fun than the Upper East Side because you can wear a baseball cap, but the Countess says she prefers to be among people who make an effort.

The agent shows her a larger apartment, on Madison Avenue, with a rent of $14,500, but she is displeased because there are so many buildings in the area, some even visible from the windows, and it does not have a doorman.

The Countess' surprise turns to shock and disappointment because she was expecting something else. She feels she is better suited to be uptown.

Jill has written a book with her mother and sisters, called Secrets of a Jewish Mother. They and the sinus-cleaning Chihuahua dog all get in the bed to choose photos to illustrate the book. Jill explains that they are called the Bed Family because they always like to get in the bed and are very cuddly.

Jill's mother Gloria, revealing a sample Secret, warns the public not to wear chiffon on Christmas.

Jill says that her mother has done a good job of giving them that message repeatedly for over forty years.

Meanwhile, back in the Hamptons, Kelly, Sonja, and the Countess have cocktails. Sonja remarks that her friends who take Adderall have lost weight but are very snippy. She would like to lose weight but does not believe that Saggitarians should take Adderall.

Kelly says that Ramona is like that. She is on fire and told her to shut up.

The Countess reveals that she calls Ramona "crazy eyes," and explains that the three of them have a lot of love to give.

Sonja reveals that having regular sex is very important. Kelly says the guys in the stables are all Argentinian and gay. She reveals that she wants to get married and have more babies because she loves kids. The Countess tells her that is because she is a child, the Kelly Child, woo-hoo.

She tries to make the "woo-hoo" a Countess-appropriate version of Real Housewife of Orange County Vicki's signature "Woo-Hoo." Kelly and Sonja stare at her, quiet for a minute.

Sonja says she would like a man that doesn't cheat. "Did your husband cheat on you?" Kelly asks. "Did yours?" retorts Sonja. Kelly confesses that she is not sure why Sonja asked her that, unless maybe she wanted to talk about something that happened to her.

The Countess asks if they have to talk about that. She says she doesn't think she had that problem. Again, Kelly and Sonja stare at her, quiet for a minute.

Sonja confesses that she is sure that the Countess has her share of suitors.

The Countess reveals that Italians are great as lovers, but not to marry, because they want to marry their mothers and grandmothers.

The girls attend a Gotham magazine party for the 100 Most Eligible Bachelors.

Jill reveals that Ramona ruined her Kodak event and she can barely refrain from bitch-slapping her.

The Countess confronts Ramona's husband about calling her "Countless." She speaks to him in halting, high school Italian. She explains that she does not want to air her dirty laundry.

She reveals that she does not think Bethenny's blouse is appropriate.

Bethenny reveals that this is the party where they were all supposed to wear a square of toilet paper, that she doesn't have a top on, and Kelly's vagina and Alex's ass cheeks are hanging out and it like a yard sale of body parts.

Jill tells one of the Eligible Bachelors that if he will stick his tongue down Sonja's throat maybe she will let him sit at her table. "Wow," he murmurs politely.

Bethenny announces her engagement. Jill reveals that it is very awkward because all these things are happening that she and Bethenny talked about laying in bed.

The Countess stifles a yawn.

High Society: Watch Out, Kardashians! Move Over, Tila Tequila!

At last a show for those of us who just can't stop wondering:

"But what about the girls who didn't make the cut for Rock of Love Bus?"

"High Society" is all about the doings of the creme de les beaufs in New York.

This show may not be suitable for viewers who are sensitive about international smiles-behind-the-fan when the subject of US culture pops up (pun soooo intended).

You know what I mean - people who just don't get that there is no such thing as old oil money.

For We the Authentic Bad Reality TV cognoscenti, however, it's a true treasure trove o' trash, featuring the arch-rival of Adam DiVello discovery wannabe Olivia Palermo, a girl named Tinsley Mortimer, who despite her positioning as an East Coast product, adheres strictly to the Stereotypiconic Indistinguishable SoCal Blonde style template, from corn-colored hair to strippalettos.

Tinsley claims to despise "being flat-footed" so much that she walks on tiptoes even when barefoot.

She is considered by some to be an aristocrat because of an ancestor who was very good at cleaning carpets. (I guess those same people would consider me a-list royalty. I have several ancestors who were really good at designing and weaving carpets).

Other cast tropes include PJ Calderon, in the role of quintessential spoiled brat, steadily partying away his trust fund, villainess gossip-monger Devorah Rose (who I believe gets a catfight scene with Tinsley in an upcoming episode), and Jules Kirby, the mandatory bigoted bus station skank who enjoys abusing hotel staff, and hates everybody but thin heterosexual white protestants. (Jules has since issued the mandatory post-production statement to the effect that CW forced her to say she hates everybody but thin heterosexual white protestants, and the network has duly responded that they didn't).

But the One True and Undisputed Star of the show is Tinsley's mom.

Dale Mercer was born for reality TV. She steals every scene she's in, and the one where, positioned at the foot of a grand staircase, she genuflects to dab at her eyes with the diaphanous hem of her red evening gown qualifies as a Great Moment in Television.

Although sadly, we are unlikely to be blessed with a second season of this train wreck of vapidity (its premiere received the lowest ratings in CW history), we are almost certain to get more of Miss Dale. Producers have got to be fighting over her as we speak.

Hey! I just realized something - Dale has been divorced from Tinsley's dad for like forever, which means she is single, which could mean - O please Mr Cris Abrego, if you are reading this - Socialite Bus of Love???

NYC Prep: "Paris Hilton was doing it, so I guess it's cool."

For someone who has, at 17, the spirit of a cartoon 50-something dowager, that Jessie would be so utterly unaware of the nature of fashion industry "intern jobs" awarded to applicants who come with a camera crew gave the First Day at Work segment an almost Chaplinesque, comedy-tinged-with-pathos feel.

But the evidence of the huge disconnect between her perception of her worldly-wise sophistication level and the facts on the ground was a reassuring reminder of the existence of Jessie's only visible teenage girl characteristic.

Except for none of it being quite believable. But then her stated goals do not include a career in acting, so it's all good.

Meanwhile, over at the Jill Stuart show, Taylor disingenuously voices over that the reason Cole doesn't like PC is because he thinks PC was "being mean at Camille's dinner party."

Sorry, Taylor. Nobody's suspension of disbelief bungee stretches that far. Cole doesn't like PC because you talk about him the way my neighbor's 11-year-old talks about the Jonas Brothers. Cole doesn't like PC because, at least for the purposes of the show, you are the Winnie of his Wonder Years, the little red haired girl in his bag of peanuts, his Venus in blue jeans, and no matter how much fun the Keyboard Analyst Posse is having speculating about the tender buds of PC's pullulating sexual preference, Cole doesn't like PC because you so obviously want to tap that.

Watching the fashion show, Taylor realizes that fashion is "like an art."

Watching the models, Cole makes typical teenage-boy-watching-models comments. When one of them succeeds in making Taylor giggle, PC suddenly realizes that his Scornful Aside skills need work, so he tosses a practice one at Cole, advising him to "take notes." The way the sequence was edited, it came off looking like he says this because he is miffed that it is Cole, and not he, who recognizes that one of Stuart's ensembles features a Mary Poppins hat.

Sebastian doesn't really know to which show he has received tickets for. He admits that he's not really into fashion, he's just psyched about hanging out with Kelli.

We are treated to a delightful scene where Sebastian clumsily mumbles to Kelli the glorious tidings that since Taylor has wisely declined to hook up with him, he is prepared to confer upon Kelli all the benefits of First Runner-Up, and Kelli deftly but politely slices him up for sandwiches, and just in case we missed it, declares in her Confessional that "I'm not his backup girl."

Poor Sebastian. Just last week, he was all excited because he scored a date with a Real Live Senior (who thought it would be fun to have a walk-on part with lines in a reality show) who not only talked to him as if he were the little brother of a friend that she had agreed to entertain for an evening, but turned out to actually speak French. And if that weren't enough, his hair was looking a little droopy, and wouldn't even flip right.

Hair-flipping and a very basic vocabulary of heavily accented French comprise Sebastian's surefire panty-dropper repertoire in its entirety, and he knows this. His Fashion Week prospects are looking mighty grim. He is reduced half-heartedly Confessing that he thinks Kelli must be bi-polar.

"There's just protocol"

PC apologizes to Kelli for accusing her of being younger than 16. If what you need is a good, old-fashioned nostalgic sigh, reach back far enough to remember just what a Grievous Offense that is.

Kelli does not accept the apology. Instead, she retaliates by accusing PC of fighting like a girl.

At the Pamela Roland show, PC greets Devorah of Social Life Magazine with a kiss and a compliment. Jessie scurries off and installs herself and Cat The Friend in PC's front row seats. It is the cruelest punishment she could impose on PC, and before he knows it, he is Making a Scene. At Fashion Week!

Humiliated, he Confesses that Jessie is a fat bitch. From his disgraceful second row seat, he leans over and hisses an epithet at her. After the show, Jessie and PC continue bickering, pecking at each other like fretful chickens. Cat the Friend is over it, and bails.

Jessie Confesses that people in the fashion industry are sometimes not who they say they are, and informs us that she is not like that.

Kelli and Camille go shopping. Kelli admires some boots. "I like them - for you," says Camille, skillfully dripping equal amounts of condescension on both boots and Kelli.

Undeterred, Kelli tells Camille that her singing teacher wants her to have an Edge and an Image. "That's funny, thinking that she doesn't think you are, you know, put together enough," Camille sneers delicately, looking Kelli up and down.

Kelli tries to save face in her voiceover. "I think Camille is confused about what an Image is."

Camille confesses that she thinks Kelli was "taken aback" by her "questioning."

Jessie gets another faux intern job with Carmen Marc Valvo. She arrives late, but the camera crew is on time, and Jessie is forgiven and even permitted to hand out press kits.

Kelli meets with the stylist, and inexplicably takes Camille along. Camille continues her "questioning" with the stylist.

Camille Confesses that even though they all go to fancy dinners, it is ridiculous for a teenage girl to have a stylist.

"You can tell when someone's not from New York, and just like, not like a real person."

Jessie decides to kill two birds with one stone: make up with PC and show off her new job at Carmen Marc Valvo, so she invites him to the show, but is upset when he shows up with a full court posse in tow - and if that weren't bad enough, Jessie Confesses, he brought people who were "(meaningful pause)different (pause redux) from everybody else that was there." PC, she informs us, knows better.

And the hits just keep on coming. Not only does PC bring one, possibly two gay men to a fashion show (a stylist and a photographer, shrugs PC in voiceover)but which Jessie considers "just not right," but he also invites Devorah the magazine editor.

"Why is she talking to PC?," Jessie wails. It grosses her out. PC should get to know people before he hangs out with them. She doesn't know them well enough to know if they are good people or not. They are 20-something.

She tells PC she is hurt, and she doesn't think he should go out with them after the show. He has time to do that in the future. PC tells Jessie that he isn't going out.

"What's her drama?" asks a bewildered Devorah. PC says he doesn't want to talk about it, and off he goes with Devorah to Buddah Bar, gallantly holding an umbrella over her head, leaving Jessie forlorn and alone in the Carmen Marc Valvo tent.

Things are looking up for Sebastian after all! He has a date "with this really hot girl I met at a party." When he agrees with her that "flambe" means "like on fire," she asks him if he is French.

"Wee," he replies, with a toss of head and hair. Sebastian has high hopes for this one, but is visibly horrified to discover that she attends public school, and immediately declares that the date is over.

This girl not only wanted a reality show walk-on, she really wanted to hook up with Sebastian, and asks if she can at least touch his hair. (It's doing much better today. He must have remembered to volumize). He refuses, and later Confesses that he thought that was weird. For once, he's right.

After gushboasting to a singularly unimpressed friend about her heady experiences at the fashion show and what an impressive manho PC is rumored to be, starstruck Taylor Confesses that she "isn't sure if it's cool to be bisexual, but it's cool that PC is bisexual."

Jessie returns to Carmen Marc Valvo, and is sent to a warehouse in New Jersey to match pictures to clothes and pull accordingly. She is thrilled to be trusted with such an important task.

But she's not thrilled with PC!

There is a really long-ass segment of her variously berating him, interspersed with Confessional, voiceover, back to harangue, and I Confess that I sort of tuned it out shortly after I heard the word "heartbreaking."

While all we saw was a couple of polite inquiries about whether she and her friend had enjoyed the show, to hear Jessie tell it, both Carmen Marc Valvo and his press dude are so consumed with the terrible awfulness of the disgusting, subhuman vermin that PC brought to the fashion show that they can think of nothing else, because "Guests of guests do not bring guests," and now Jessie's job is in jeopardy, and Carmen and the press dude have lost all respect for her, at the very thought that she might possibly know such wretched creatures, but despite all that, her only concern is to protect PC from predators who only want to use him for his money.

Jessie begins to cry and asks that the Confessional stop.

PC confesses that he loves Jessie to death and would do anything for her. He offers to send Carmen Marc Valvo a note, even personally go to the office, which finally shuts her up.

Well played, PC! Check, and mate!

Jessie hands over her queen without a fight, and mumbles something about really wanting the job. Since the last thing we heard they were telling her what she would be doing next week, this appears to be something of a non-issue, and thus the perfect note on which to end the episode.

Southern Belles Louisville: The Belles Toll a Toneless Farewell

So this uncomfortable little Real Housewives Lite knockoff has come and gone like the slightly queasy morning after a night spent consuming a surfeit of questionable seafood.

I did get a small chortle when one of them accidentally alluded to their not having known each other from Adam's old fox before the show.

Shea will, and should, end up marrying Joey from Real World Cancun.

I have known about 8 dozen versions of Shea over the years, and she always ends up marrying Joey from Real World Cancun.

Her obligatory post-emotional trauma drastic hair change is an object lesson for fair-complected brunettes everywhere: No matter what anybody tells you about how lightening your hair will make you look soft and youthful, do NOT do it without first experimenting with a wig to make sure that it does not totally ERASE you!

If we cared to dig deeply enough, which I don't, the "real dirt" we would probably uncover is that they were all recovering from unsuccessful attempts at modeling careers, or unsuccessful attempts at thinking about one, and that Julie is the only one who owns up to it. And will probably be the only Belle who, as a result of the show, achieves it.

I loved her nail polish at the dinner in the opening segment!

It was this really pretty dark burgundy color, which means that while it is perfect on cinnamon-dusted Julie, it probably wouldn't work on dirty mustard-dusted Weimeraner me. Burgundy clothes work fine, but every burgundy nail polish I have tried just makes my hands look sickly, especially now that both sun exposure and melanin production have been discontinued.

But I digress.

I also really liked Hadley's silver necklace at the going-away party, and I hate her for having a big ass enough head to be able to wear a wide headband like that, especially a tacky silver lace one. But I would do one that was silver lace all around, not lame elastic in the back. What was she thinking?

So captivated was I by that silver lace, that while Shea was strolling around Jeff's Dream House, I developed a love-hate relationship with that over-Bedazzled prostitution whore of a black and silver car coat.

I was glad to see that Kellie came to her senses, but I am still so annoyed by the very existence of that butt-fugly gray sweater of hers with that enormous turtleneck. Maybe it's supposed to be ironic. Come to think of it, that whole enveloped in giant folds of bulkachunk wool seems to be a sort of sartorial leitmotif for her. Is it that cold in Louisville?

If you can get past all that supersize knitting, Kellie is a sort of Modern Today version of a classical Dutch Baroque beauty, and it's a shame that at her age, she still doesn't know what to do with it.

Speaking of people standing around holding giant lumps of beauty, turning it over and over in their hands and looking puzzled, I would really like to get a hold of Hadley's mama. Although that haircut has become ubiquitous and tiresome, it's the only thing she's doing right. It also appears to be the only thing she's doing.

But she did make me spend several minutes wondering if I should ask my hair designer if she thinks I should add spiky bangs to my own copy of the ubiquitous and tiresome haircut.

I so miss the squillion different length layers hairdo that looked like it had been done with a Weed-Whacker. When is that one coming back in style? I didn't even have to comb it. Plus if you have very coarse, straight hair like I do, it will naturally stick out in all directions, giving the illusion of volume.

I would be very surprised if funding is found for a season 2 of this forlorn thing. The hamsters were spectacularly unremarkable, and failed to produce enough sensation or drama to compensate for that.

Southern Belles Louisville: Lord, this show makes me preachy!

Mercifully, subsequent episodes of this show have not been quite as "raw" as the "premiere," maybe it was just a learning curve thing, with the 1st couple of airings taking viewers along for the ride - an extra bonus layer of "reality" as the producers figure out just how much of that commodity viewers should be asked to stomach.

To atone for past sins, the last couple of episodes have featured some frankly comical overstaging - like the "slumber party," but it's Julie's "babysitting" sequence that, for all its hilarity, gives our suspension of disbelief a serious workout!

First, we are asked to accept the idea that Julie, in the 35 years she has been alive, has never spent so much as an hour or two alone with any children.

From there we glide into the idea that her first-ever conversation with her father on the subject of whether she might one day wish to be a parent occurred last week, and then it is just a hop-skip to Julie's grand Epiphany that in order to find out how becoming a mother would change her life, she should spend an afternoon babysitting - not one, not two, not even three - but FOUR small children!

Enter two of Julie's good friends - each with two daughters of about the same age - two sets of extremely telegenic sisters, one pair blonde, one pair brunette, all completely at ease with lights, crew and camera.

Of course we only see what makes it out of the editing room, but it does not appear that the two sets of sisters have ever played together before. All the interaction between the children that we are shown involves sister playing with sister. Kids who know each other would be much more likely to pair off according to age, kids who have never met will tend to interact with their respective sibling.

This show just might be a contender for the Mostest.Audrinage.Ever reality show tradition award - if some, even most, of the cast of the various Real Housewives shows were only glancingly acquainted with each other prior to the first day of shooting, the Belles' lack of shared "history" is glaring.

Nevertheless, as I continue to watch it, I find that it provides as much fodder for sober refection as for helpless giggling fits.

Kellie's situation, for example, is heart-rending, a grim reminder that whether it feels awkward, weird, even inappropriate, the time for the "Do You Want Kids?" talk (or more kids, if one of you has, like Kellie's Jeff, already obtained offspring) is preferably the second, but no later than the third date, BEFORE either party has had a chance to become "emotionally invested" enough to cause serious damage should there be a wide variance in their respective views on this subject.

It's a thought-provoking illustration that no matter how trashy the show, how stupid the script, or how inane the hamsters, even the lamest and most superficial television shows can educate, even illuminate, and this is something that every one of the "single ladies" - and their single brothers - who watch this show can "take away" from it, and receive the huge benefit of saving themselves from the kind of agony Kellie is suffering, an agony that would be even more emotionally eviscerating, even more causative of permanent harm, if Jeff were not such a tool.

At least when it is all over, she will have the comfort of relief that she did not make a permanent committment to a total asswipe.

Shea, who also has a Jeff, is confronting basically the same issue, at least in my view, since I don't make a large distinction on the basis of species.

Even if we lay aside their housing preferences - while Jeff dreams of mulching and mowing as proud handyman and householder, Shea's notion of the ideal home involves maid service and a spa on the premises - the real non-negotiable, potential deal-breaker is that Jeff comes with what is, for all practical purposes, a child.

The well-being of dependent family members who share one's home, whether human or not, can be neither relegated to the status of non-essential "extra," nor swept aside entirely, and anyone who would even consider such a thing is presenting empirical evidence that they are NOT husband material.

If they are capable of, much less willing, to renege on their committment to that being or beings, what could one expect who considers choosing such a person as life partner? And this goes both ways. If Shea can so easily dismiss the needs of Jeff's dog - well, in the case at hand, Shea has already been pretty upfront with Jeff about just what kind of living hell he could expect, and indeed the internet buzz is that he has wisely delivered himself - and his pupdog - from such a grisly fate, and empowered Shea to return to the garden to seek a more suitably crushable flower.

That this match was doomed was pretty much foretold in every frame of Shea-and-Jeff footage that made it to air, and in case there were any doubts, it was writ large in big red flags in the scene where Shea takes Jeff for a pre-marital counseling session with an gentleman who looks eeriely like Emily's creepy dad. Shea believes that the counseling will prevent her from ending up divorced like her parents.

"I have changed so much for you," Jeff blurts. Shea asserts that she has seen no change, but whether she has or not, whether it is even objectively true or not, if such a sentiment is in the heart of either party, that relationship is dead in the water.

Ideally, true love does change us, in that it makes us want to be, and become, better people, the best version of ourselves, but that's several galaxies away from Jeff's orbit.

As always, even as we keep in mind that the footage of each hamster is deliberately edited for the purpose of drawing a particular "character," we are also obliged to recognize the flip side of that: no matter what they leave out, no matter how they change or remove from context entirely - if the hamster doesn't say or do it, they won't have it to leave in.

Although it may be that Shea's footage is edited frame by frame in order to paint for us a portrait of a woman completely devoid of substance, if we assess the footage that she has given them to work with, we can come to no other conclusion that she is either a talented actress or that there really is no "there" there.

Internet personality aklein has called Emily "painful to watch." She has, aiklen remarks sadly, "emotional maturity of a 12 year old."

It's hard to come up with a credible rebuttal to that.

I am so not the appropriate person to defend any of these hamsters, but in fairness, there was a scene where Emily's Xtreme Cage Match Creepy dad was ragging on her about her hair, while Mama just sits there and says nothing, and there was something about it that looked like it was one of the more natural and effortless bits of footage we are likely to see on any reality show. I got the distinct feeling Emily heard that song with dismal regularity, just another number in CreepyDaddy's extensive repertoire of Pick on Emily showstoppers.

Whether Emily's dad is "for real" or not is a tough call. On the one hand, we have all known people with the misfortune of having parents like that. If it's a role and he is an actor, he has certainly "committed" to the character. He has it down, down to the teensiest creepy nuance.

This is probably born more of wishful thinking for Emily's sake than concrete perception, but a couple of times he has appeared to be mugging for the camera in an almost SpencerPrattian cartoon villain face mode.

I would be willing to bet that there is a connection between Emily's emotional development issues and having grown up with a father who considers his daughter having physically "matured too early" as a sort of inexpiable indiscretion, an unforgivable transgression for which he is still reprimanding her even as her thirtieth (or 30-something) birthday approaches.

Emily is presented to us as the classic damaged bird, her plumage dulled by a lifetime of stern reproaches for having ever had any plumage, without an ally, reviled in the nest which should have nurtured her, and which she now fears to leave, torn between what remaining shreds she has of natural, healthy instincts to go forth and be a person, pitted against the sheer terror of displeasing the father she has never, can never please, who has devoted himself to steadily and relentlessly breaking her down, convincing her that she is essentially incapable of personhood, and her female role model appears to conform to that ideal. Emily's mother is painted as a non-entity, an empty cipher who silently accepts Ogre Dad's condemnation of her daughter.

Her determination to move to Las Vegas may not be the shrewdest move, nor her aspirations of becoming a high profile broadcast journalist the best match for her aptitudes and abilities, but that she has enough "oomph" left into her to recognize and follow the self-preservation instinct to get the hell away from her toxic Daddy is a positive and hopeful sign.

Ironically, while it is Emily who dreams of becoming a TV star, it is Hadley the Flounderer who has the face for it, though she, too, appears to suffer from an extreme case of arrested emotional development, in some ways even more fundamental and deep-seated. So much so that if I were obliged to bet on which of the two would "succeed," in terms of growing into a whole and functional person, I would put my money on Emily.

The character of Hadley is as materially empty and vacuous as Shea, at least as she is presented to us, and as always with the understanding that she could be acting, playing a role that was assigned to her.

Lord, this show makes me preachy!

16 & Pregnant: Making a Way Out of No Way - The Miracle, The Mirror

For most of the world, a girl of sixteen - or even younger - having a baby is an everyday occurrence, as it has been throughout human history.

But in the US, due to a variety of factors, over the last few decades it has become the exception rather than the rule, although some statistics indicate a reversal of the trend.

At the moment, however, it is noteworthy enough to get a reality show, whatever that means, and MTV has obliged.

The first episode was notable only for its extreme predictability.

Featuring the same demographic as Engaged & Underage, the girl steps up, the sullen boy sulks, and we can see that this is going to be one of those kids whose contact with his biological father, if there is any at all, will be infrequent, and the best case scenario will be the girl finding a new partner who is willing to help her raise the child.

The second episode took an uncharacteristic step up from the lower socio-economic tier, though barely. This girl was a cheerleader whose babydaddy never appeared, nor was his presence desired by the girl or her piece-o'-work mother, who was able to provide all the additional tribulations that the pregnant teen required.

Unable to afford housing of her own, and coming to rapid grips with the financial reality of parenthood, I got the sense that this young mother's best hope at salvaging her life would be to apply the advantages of the education she had enjoyed and place the baby for adoption.

In Episode 3, the producers returned to their usual demographic pool and selected a plump young couple remarkable in that the babydaddy not only appeared able and willing to be a father, but not utterly miserable about the prospect, and even professed love for the young girl and asked her to marry him, down on one knee, proffering a pink sapphire ring from Wal-Mart that cost $21.34.

The scene where he calls the same Wal-Mart to inquire about returning the expensive video game he had purchased was strangely moving.

Maci, the subject of the first episode of the series, is probably the most representative of what usually happens, and not just with 16-year olds.

She just sort of instantly grew up, and set about doing whatever she had to do. Of course finding out the boyfriend was a worthless crumb o' dung who didn't really give a politician's ass about her or the baby will have been as horribly painful for her as for anybody who has their heart broken, but being a mom, she no longer has the luxury of grieving about it, receiving comfort and support from friends who will stay up all night with her eating ice cream and letting her talk it all out, doing something new and fabulous with her hair, slowly getting herself back into the social scene, being convinced by those supportive friends to accept the invitation from that really nice guy who has always liked her, etc.

She had to go to work and take care of her baby, just like millions of other moms in her same situation - just like many moms of people who are reading this!

There are many shows that take cameras into delivery rooms, and there is a moment, when the baby is placed in its mother's arms, that is so private and so personal that we should so not be seeing it, but see it we do, in show after show.

Something happens in that moment, we look at the mother's face, at her eyes, and we see magic. We see a real live miracle happen right before our eyes, much bigger than the biological miracle of reproduction, of birth itself, a miracle, it has been suggested, that, along with art, is the closest we will get in this life to seeing our Creator.

That light that comes into the eyes of that new mother, when she holds her child in her arms for the first time, is tinged with the divine. It is in that moment that she ceases to be whoever she was, and becomes something much more - it is in that moment that she becomes what she will be for the rest of her life - a mother.

From that moment on, everything she does, everything she thinks, everything she feels, will be about her child. There is nothing she will not do to provide for that child, protect him from harm, comfort and care for him, today, when he is a tiny, helpless infant, and in 60 years, when his hair is gray and hers is white.

That Maci's story was the most "real" is at once a reflection of that totally awesome miracle, and commentary on the sorry way society treats that miracle.

In many ways, we have not progressed a whole lot from the days of the prevailing cultural mores so poignantly illustrated in Rizzo's song in Grease.

(For those unfamiliar, the thinking at that time was that it was the height of selfishness for a girl who "got herself in trouble" to "try to bring the boy down too" by telling him about it. Her life was ruined, of course. That was a given, but why, society "reasoned," should his life be ruined and his future destroyed too? After all, it was the girl who had "made the mistake." He was just doing what came naturally.)

Today, in one way we have gone in the opposite direction, with most people thinking that the girl absolutely MUST tell the boy she is pregnant, and there is more lip service paid to issues of child support and whatnot, but the reality is that in the US, some 90 odd per cent of people living in poverty are mothers and their children in situations where the father opts out of participating financially. Some of those mothers were married to the fathers, some receive token sums of court-mandated money, but the main societal message remains that it is the female's "problem," and the most likely answer to any statistics on the subject will be some variation of the sentiment that she should not have had the children if she didn't have the money to take care of them.

Ironically, in an age where more girls - and more women - have (at least in theory) more reproductive choices available to them than ever before, there has been an interesting trend among the US mainstream demographic in recent years, a sort of regression, if you will, to the pre Roe vs Wade days.

Terminating an unwanted pregnancy has reclaimed a level of stigma and taboo that it had not enjoyed since the 1950s, even in cases where it is obviously the only sane option - for example, in the case of women - and little girls - who do not have the resources, financial or emotional, to care for a child, nor any realistic chance of acquiring them in 9 months.

Ologists hold forth on a variety of fascinating reasons and theories about why this is so, and it is an intriguing subject for debate and discussion.

What's not up for debate and discussion, however, is the reality of those girls, those women, who decide not only to deliver, but keep, their babies, and while all those ologists and hangers-on are enjoying all those delicious theories and lively discussions, those mothers are rushing to get dressed, feed their babies, pack their diaper bags, hurrying to catch pre-dawn buses, drop their babies off, and run to catch another bus, probably several, praying that they will not be late for their first job, whose wage, even when put together with the wage for the second or third job, is still not enough to purchase the basics of survival.

Not one of the girls on the 16 and Pregnant series chose to end her pregnancy.

We have no way of knowing whether this is because so few girls today make that choice, that there were just no candidates who met other casting and production criteria, whatever those may have been, or whether because of the great stigma of abortion, MTV felt that it would just be too controversial.

In fact, all the girls but one elect to raise their babies themselves.

The season finale features a heart-rendingly sweet and together little couple, flowers who have somehow managed to grow up into strong and loving young people despite both having come from dysfunctional train wreck homes.

They are determined that their child will know a different life, and being smart enough to realize that they cannot give her anything more than what they have, which is, it bears repeating, a train wreck, they wisely arrange to have the baby adopted by a a couple who can give her what they want for her, what they are, in fact, determined to get for themselves - one day.

But recognizing that 1) their baby will need it before "one day" occurs, and 2) "one day" is not going to occur if they set out to try to raise a baby at 16, with their only support consisting of their dysfunctional train wreck parents, "All that baby needs is love" insists the boy's fresh-out-of-prison father.

When I mentioned to a neighbor that I was going to blog about this show, her mother offered an interesting perspective.

"I don't like that show," she said. "It romanticizes it too much. That first girl had a hard time, but you look at some of them, their parents are helping them out, a couple of them got to go move in with their boyfriends, it shows them having these baby showers, they have all the cute little clothes, and then they show them in the delivery room, shows their face when they see the baby."

While her view is directly opposed to most of the comments I have read and heard about the show - including those of many teens who assert that the show has made them much more aware of the difficulties of having a baby while still in high school - I was struck by the kingpin of her argument - "it shows their face when they see the baby."

She was talking about that miracle.

Being a parent is the most important job in the world. We hear a lot of lip service paid to that, but we do not put our money where our mouth is. In actual practice, we do not give that miracle the respect, the awe, that it deserves.

The real "reality" is that as a society, that miracle is Maci making a way out of no way, and we are her no-account boyfriend.

Real Housewives of New Jersey: Bravo Gets Its Discovery Channel On

Two things I doubt we will ever know: 1) what transpired between Dina and Danielle, and 2) What role Bravo played in the structure of the finale, including the "big family dinner" and the presence of Danielle and the book.

Both Dina and Danielle have made repeated references to a falling out between them, conflict that pre-dates and is unrelated to the book.

That the date of the big family dinner would coincide with the show's season finale could have been a post-production decision, or it could reflect routine, run-of-the-mill reality show "collusion" between producers and cast, but as was the case with the famous Salsa Night event, the idea that the decision to invite Danielle originated with the family strains "suspension of disbelief" to the breaking point.

The Manzos all have some relationships with non-family members, with whom they are on good terms, yet the only non-family member invited to this family dinner was Danielle.

That Danielle might seize a gathering of all the Manzos to confront the family about their reaction to the book, and to her, with or without prodding and/or logistical assistance from Bravo is believable. Whipping the book out and plopping it onto the table smells, at least to me, of a closer, more familiar relationship with and knowledge of production values than Danielle's modeling experience would have provided.

I have not been able to watch a single episode of this show without being involuntarily shifted into Discovery Channel mode, and I think the finale may have done that to a lot of viewers who don't even watch the Discovery Channel.

It was a continuous anvil-drop, flattening the heads of the viewing audience with the message that 1) The Manzos are a closed society, and 2) Intruders are not welcome and will be ejected.

So who really "took the book through the town?" The whole point of the show was that it does not matter.

If one Manzo did it, they all did it, and Caroline, as the tribal chief, will "take the blame" on the tribe's behalf.

Just as kings and chieftains of old rode out to battle in front of their clansfolk, so Caroline assumed responsibility for her tribe.

That is the "real" reality, and it trumps and renders irrelevant the minutiae of individual actions on the part of those who ride behind her.

The most interesting Discovery Channel Moment was of course when one of the tribe stood in opposition to the rest.

The principle that loyalty to a group, family, tribe or nation takes precedence over any and all other values, mores or moral code so permeates our human family, today as yesterday, in the glittering modern city as in the most isolated mountain hamlet, that many of us don't even notice it, or if we do, we simply take it for granted, and consciously or unconsciously seat it firmly at the head of the table at our own "family dinner" of attitudes, opinions and beliefs, above tenets or doctrines of our faith tradition, even our own personal notions of "right" or "wrong."

If a group with which we have a strong association, with which we identify, does it, it is right, even though we might be the first to call it "wrong" when the same thing is done by a different group.

Group members who diverge from this take a big risk. Historically, they would most likely be set upon and killed outright by the other group members, or physically banished from the group, which historically would mean death, as a matter of practicality, since once humans had established tribes and communities, we became dependent on them for survival. They were, after all, established in order to enable us to survive.

Today the banishment is more likely to take a less literal form.

Banishment of a primal dissenter - meaning one who places some other principle or value above the primal and unassailable rule of "if my group does it, it's right," in modern times frequently involves banishment by dismissal - the dissenter is labeled as one version or another of a harmless fool, and any potential threat to the group - or to decisions made by the chief on the group's behalf - is removed.

That threat, of course, the danger being averted by this action, is that other group members might follow suit, stand up with the dissenter, divide the group and reduce its power.

This very thing has, of course, happened in the course of our history, so many times that today it has become commonplace for another group to initiate the tactic, by encouragement of an existing potential dissenter, or by outright placement of a "ringer" to act as dissenter with the aim of dividing the group, and conquering the two resulting weaker groups, thus the expression "divide and conquer."

Caroline - with the help of her brother, in the role of lieutenant - deftly averted the possibility of anything like that happening to the Manzos, shrewdly dismissing Jacqueline's dissent by attributing it to the latter's "good heart," and magnanimously forgiving her, including her in the fold even as she is effectively banished from holding any real power within it.

It's unlikely that she realized that she was also delivering, in the approximate words of a popular sacred text "a lesson for those with eyes to see."

Southern Belles Louisville - Not Suitable for Sensitive Viewers

May all applicable deities, djinns and spirits be invoked, and my household instructed to inform visitors, in hushed tones, that I am laid upon the bed!

I have watched the "Real Housewives," in all its various ghastly iterations. I have squee!ed and shuddered in delighted disgust with the best of them in the unspeakably lurid parade of the majestic oeuvre of Chris Abrego, each more grandiloquently repellent than the last.

So what is it about the seemingly innocuous-by-comparison Southern Belles Louisville that makes my flesh crawl?

It took me a while to figure it out, but I think, to put it as politely as possible, that it is the diminished suspension of disbelief requirement.

With all due respect to DiVello, Abrego, et al, their creations give the senses an "out." The much-decried obviously scripted and totally UN-real nature of the reality shows to which we have become accustomed permit us to emerge from our viewing experience comforted, even if subconsciously, by the knowledge that it is "just a show," a work of fiction no different from Ong Bak or Original Recipe Exorcist.

But somehow, Southern Belles Louisville, whether due to artistic intent on the part of the director or exceptional dramatic talent on the part of the cast, fails to provide that cooling spray of reassurance.

These hamsters, this reality show, cranks the realness up a couple of notches past my viewing pleasure center.

Maybe it is just the unavoidable damning by faint praise of calling these characters "better drawn" than the typical Rock of Love skank, a sort of superficial pseudo-documentary version of Arendt's banality of evil.

Or maybe it's because that banality hits a little too close to home in ways that at least for most of us, Bikini Corrie and Heidi Montag do not.

While relatively few of us can make such a claim about Saaphyri or Brittanya, if we are to be brutally honest, and leaving aside any and all distinctions of geographical or cultural context, most of us have, at some point in our lives, known these Belles.

And even more poignantly, most of us will have, at some point in our lives, faced the sad task of comforting their hapless Beaux.

The Belles' grisly payload of skeeve is not about just another gaggle of bimbos "suckin back" on the glorified screwdriver whose current popularity has no doubt caused the descendants of that crafty old imperialist Lauchlin Rose to ceaselessly bless his crusty old opportunistic soul, nor is it yet another stream of glittering scenes of yet another charity event where the total sum of funds raised is slightly less than price paid by most of the attendees for their gowns.

If we are tempted to gasp at the incogitant cruelty of Hadley, as she describes her dream wedding standing two feet from the man who has just declared himself and been spurned, what really gets us is the look on his face. That's just a smoosh realer than I like my reality, thanks just the same.

Hadley actually breaks two hearts in the course of the first episode. Her best friend, who, though presented to us as a "ladies man," has the words "quintessential nice guy" painted all over his every word and gesture, is also in love with her, and meets the same sad fate as his rival.

If we can manage to move past the cringeworthy pathos of those sorry little scenes, we are obliged to acknowledge that it would be disingenuous, not to mention impossible, to completely divorce the show's zeitgeist from cultural context.

On the contrary, we are hit in the face with the social costs of a culture in which some of the children remain children until they are well into their thirties.

If Hadley displays the emotional nescience of a teenaged girl, Emily seems similarly oblivious to the gilded cage from which she acts out "her dream."

Thanks to parents depicted as annoying salt of the earth folksy folks who dine at a card table adorned with a bottle of supermarket salad dressing, whose down-home working class ethos belies their inherited millions, in return for some relatively mild belittling of her unremarkable hairstyle choices, Emily receives the safety net that permits her to eschew a seat in the family boardroom in favor of a low-wage fun job at the local TV station.

The Belles' blondetourage is rounded out by Kellie, the obligatory divorcee "waiting for her settlement," currently obliged to live in a modest home that she petulantly boasts would have fit into the garage of the residence provided by her erstwhile spouse. The poor thing has even been reduced to using one of the bedrooms as a closet, to accomodate the designer spoils of her late marriage. At 32, Kellie declares she wants to have her own money now. She wants her settlement, dammit!

Of all the Belles, Julie is the least fleshed out, at least in the first episode, where her role seems to be primarily that of Culture Victim. A low-end fashion model in her mid-thirties, she is now subjected to the indignity of being told she could get work in ad campaigns looking for "soccer mom types." As the camera moves from the decade-old glamour shots in her book to her face upon hearing this verdict from a smug-faced agent, the narrator doesn't have to say a word. The strains of the leitmotif of heartbreak swell as clearly as if sounded by a score of violins. Julie's story is trite but true. The Youth Culture really does destroy lives and souls. Well, duh.

Speaking of narration, apparently Shea does need some. We hear her background described as "nouveaux riche," against a montage that screams "Ya think?" If ever reality show has shown us a stereotype, Shea is it. Her shallowness and vapidity soar to cartoonish near-Hills quality heights. She has captured, it would seem, the heart of a suitor, but pouts that she has no ring. She takes him shopping for one. He would, he says, need to sell both kidneys in order to afford one that she would wear.

Shea is the creepiest of all because if you have known only one Belle in your lifetime, whether you knew her in Louisville, Lagos or Lhasa, in the 20s, the 60s, the 80s, she's the one you knew.

Maybe you know her today. And even if you missed it, you just know she had a really amazing Super Sweet Sixteen.

Real Housewives of New York: Chihuahua Tongue Flashback and The Count is an Old Rake

In case we had forgotten about RHNY's contribution to the Most Revolting Moments In Television Hall of Ew, Jill promises her little chihuahua dog that if he cooperates with having his Halloween costume fitted, she will "let" him insert his tongue deep into her nose and lick it clean.

Mercifully, we were spared a repeat of Ms Zarin's preferred combination nasal hygiene and animal cruelty performance.

This week's real RHNY gossip was off-camera - according to reports, Count de Lesseps (who received his title as a result of an ancestor having arranged for some rich men to make some more money) has forsaken his erstwhile Countess Luann, who refers to herself as a "Native American from Connecticut," for Her Royal Highness Princess Kemeria Abajobir Abajifar of the ancient Gibe Kingdom in the land today popularly known as Ethiopia.

Luann, who distinguished herself on the show for expressing displeasure when Bethenny introduced her to a driver as "Luann," instead of "Countess de Lesseps," maybe ten minutes before a scene in which she is shown addressing catering staff by their first names, and hurling an especially ugly back-handed putdown at a ten year old girl who said she wanted to be a model when she grew up, and snort-sneering at another who aspired to be a baby-sitter, has written a book called "Class with the Countess."

Count and Countess are said to be currently "separated," but if they should divorce, will outraged readers demand that the publisher send them a new copy of the book with an updated title? Maybe "Class with the Ex-Countess," or "Class with a Native American from Connecticut?"

On the show, however, Luann goes shopping with her daughter, who, she says, enjoys "watching her (Luann) getting dressed in the dressing room." (WTF?)

She buys the daughter a black hoodie identical to one I got last week at Wal-Mart, except the daughter's has unsightly elbow patches. Mine cost $9.

I hope the Possibly Soon-to-be Ex-Countess didn't pay a whole lot extra for those patches.

After re-watching a few episodes, I have, upon reflection, come to the realization that Kelly, at least as she is depicted on the show, may be "troubled," and thus the only appropriate comment would be to express the sincere hope that she will seek and receive any help she may need.