Is Reality TV Real?

A mother, with her seven-year-old daughter in tow, storms into a restaurant.   While screaming obscenities at a group of stunned people seated at a table, she knocks everything on their table to the floor.

While Sister #1 is lying on a sofa with her legs spread wide apart, Sister #2 takes aims with an electric shaver; they both giggle.

A beautiful twenty-something young woman is sobbing out of control on the bathroom floor.  It seems the man she loves, the man she's known for one week,  is also dating twenty-four other equally beautiful women...and sleeping with many of them.

A famous singer, who has had the respect and adoration of the American population for decades, shows 30 million people on national television (in just one hour) that she is cunning, deceptive, mean spirited, and unstable.

A mother with multiple children (as in six all the same age) belittles and screams at their father over and over and over again, until he screams back and then leaves the family.

A father walks into his twelve-year-old daughter's room to discover she is doing her homework with a neighbor boy who is also her age.  He loses his temper and screams obscenities at the boy and tells him to leave; then turns his ire on his daughter.  

IS REALITY TV REAL?

Absolutely!  It really happened.  I saw all of the above while I was channel surfing, trying to find something worthwhile to watch within my 800 channel selection after a very long day of retirement.

I was going to keep my occupation a secret--don't let anyone tell you retirement is not hard work--but I've never been able to keep a secret, so why try now.  I'm a sixty-something baby boomer. Actually, I'm lying.  I'm closer to seventy; not a baby boomer at all.  I only mention my age here because it's the reason I'm upset about what is happening on television these days.  Is anyone else as disgusted and appalled as I am? Something needs to be done.  We seniors need to raise our voices and say "Why is Reality TV discriminating against old folks?"

OLD PEOPLE DISCRIMINATION

Reality television is focusing too much on youth and ignoring the drawing power of us old folks. Imagine the following scenarios and tell me people wouldn't like to see...

Ten ninety-plus-year-old women hobbling after the only man in their wing at the nursing home.  His wheelchair is faster than they are, but as he rounds a corner he slides out onto the floor.  He frantically crawls to the bathroom where he can be heard sobbing uncontrollably.

An elderly couple walk into a restaurant and ask for the early-bird special.  When the hostess tells them the special ended at 6:00p.m., they plummet her with their canes.  

Two sisters, who appear to be in their late eighties,  are sitting on a sofa.  One lays down and spreads her legs while the other plugs in an electric mixer.  In the background a voice yells out, "No! Edith. No! Electric shaver, not mixer."  The sisters giggle.

A ninety-five-year-old man is wheeled into an Emergency Room by his wife who has a huge smile on her face.   He's holding a bottle of Vitamins, he thinks.  "That's Viagra, not Vitamins," the doctor says.  "How many did you take?"  His wife giggles and holds up four fingers.

An elderly, never married sheep farmer...oh...nevermind.