Homosexuality and Sports

Jason Collins is gay.  No matter what talk radio station I turn to, that is all people are talking about.  Collins is the first male American professional athlete in one of the major sports to come out while he is still an active player.  All of those adjectives are key in the description.  Tennis, swimming, figure skating and golf are all sports with male professional athletes but if one of their players came out it would be reported on the back page of the sports section.  It would be a non-story after 24 hours.  Athletes coming out after retirement from one of the big 4 (football, basketball, baseball and hockey) is nothing new.  Female athletes coming out while they are still playing?  It's been happening for years and it rarely gets a reaction. So my excitement over his coming out has been squashed by all the ignorant comments that I've heard for the past 2 days. 

The two most common arguments:

Gay people should have separate locker rooms.  If I were playing sports and one of my teammates were gay I wouldn't feel comfortable changing next to him. 

So apparently gay men are all sex fiends.  They can't stand near someone of the sex they are attracted to without wanting to have sex with him.  And of course all people of the sex they are attracted to are attractive to them.  I have never been a man but I have changed and/or gone to the bathroom in front of plenty of men and gay women over the years and, in doing so, been partially or completely undressed in front of them.  At no point did I have to fight someone off because they were so overcome by the sight of my partially naked body that they had to jump on me.  

To play the other side of this argument.  What if someone was attracted to you?  Does that mean they would act on it?  Do people typically physically assault every person they have a crush on?  More often than not, you hide your feelings from the person you are lusting after and go out of your way to seem like you are not attracted to them.  I have had men and women grab my ass or make inappropriate comments to me while I was walking down the street or into a bar.  I wouldn't advocate for all people who may be attracted to me to be banned from public places because they incidents are the exception and not the rule.  I have been well over 100 situations where something like this could have occurred; I can count all the incidents on one hand. 

There is nothing courageous about what he did.  It's not like he's a superstar.  If Kobe Bryant came out that would be brave.  That would be a story.  

Your accountant coming out is not a big deal to the general public. For the most part, kids aren't watching your accountant on TV.  Your accountant doesn't regularly bump elbows with some of the richest, famous and most talented people on the planet. Your accountant would still be brave if he came out within his co-workers and circle of friends but it wouldn't be national news. 

A 12 year old boy who knows he is gay but is afraid to come out because he doesn't want someone to call him a sissy may not have known who Jason Collins was yesterday but today he is his biggest fan.  Because he sees someone who shares his sexuality but doesn't act like the over the top, gay stereotype that is so often portrayed on American television (think the New Normal, Glee, Rupaul, etc). He sees another option.  He sees that he can be gay and still be masculine and not the but of a joke.  And he sees those guys that are superstars playing next to this guy and not blinking an eye.   

Collins pointed this out in one of his interviews.  He made a point to mention that he is not an effeminate gay man.  Many gay listeners called in and criticized him for this.  These people need to face the fact that people who's inner circle doesn't include gay people think of all gay men as the overly effeminate lisping stereotype and all gay women as  the manly, unattractive man-hating stereotype.  It is important for people to realize that gay people come in all shapes, sizes, colors and personalities just like the rest of us. Yes, sometimes you can look at a person and guess that they are gay.  But a lot of the time you can't.  And there are a lot of effeminate straight men out there screwing with this stereotype.  

I am black and my husband is white.  There are a lot of people who don't approve of our relationship.  Many of these people are very vocal about their disapproval of our relationship.  30 years ago there were laws that supported people's rights to discriminate against us and, in some cases, arrest us for being married.  Unfortunately there are still many people who feel this way.  There are still towns with segregated proms and neighborhoods.  But they are the exception, not the rule. 

I hope that we are saying the same things about gay rights a few years from now.  That when a so called religious person compares homosexuality to bestiality, pedophilia and polygamy people look at those people as crazy.  That those people no longer get to be part of the mainstream.  That their hate is limited to the cult that they represent.    That those people are on the fringe with the rest of the bigots and the rest of us are allowed to live our lives with the same rights and freedoms as every other American citizen.  

I'm a Gleek and I'm Mad

So I love Glee. From the first episode I was hooked.  The singing and dancing.  It's like a musical and a soap opera all in one.  In the beginning it was great but it has slowly started to lose it's way.  I was excited when they had the 'Become a Glee Cast Member' contest this summer.  With a handful of the cast slated to graduate from high school and leave the show at the end of the season, they had to get on to developing new characters to keep the show going.  The show wasn't an American Idol type show with a bunch of rejects and a few talented people.  It was all talented people that were chosen to compete, a welcome change from most of the reality shows. 

My top pick from the summer actually was one of the winners which I loved.  His name is Damian and he is  this Irish guy with amazing eyes who sings old school, rat pack sort of standards.  He is charming and vulnerable and has a awesome accent.  So of course Ryan Murphy and the rest of the team can't figure out what to do with him despite talking about how much they could do with him during the contest.  He's just been in the background with no story line no character development and honestly I feel sorry for him.  It's embarrassing to watch someone who so many Gleeks grew to love over the summer just wallow in "extra-dom".  He is essentially part of the pit crew.  So we wasted the summer listening to him sing and rooting for him as struggled to learn to dance dance moves.  Why have a contest if you weren't going to do anything of substance with the winners.  Any fan could have been plucked off the street and inserted into the show with the role he's been given.  

Another complaint is the diminished role of Chris Coffer, the gay kid.  He is one of the greatest talents on the show and he rarely gets a solo any more.  Maybe they are trying to help us get used to not having him featured since he's supposed to graduate but they did this for a lot of last season too and Rachel, Finn and the other seniors seem to be getting plenty of face time.  It all started when they added Blaine to the show.  I get it, Blaine is talented and the ladies love him but he is no Kurt and really he's basically a one trick pony with his boy band moves and head tosses.  I need to see Kurt him signing and dancing every episode, as a lead, not part of the chorus.  He is the heart of the show and idol for a lot of gay kids who have no one else to look up to in Hollywood.  Not featuring him in the show any more is criminal. 

And while I'm on it, where in the hell are Rachel's adopted parents?  You've been talking non-stop about her 2 gay dads since the beginning of time.  When are we going to meet them?  How hard is it to find 2 gay man who can sing, dance and act in Hollywood? I mean seriously.  Step up to the plate. 

Glee has lost a least 1.5 stars over the past years by not living up to the standard that they set.  They need to get it together or they will lose fans.  That's all I'm saying.  It's still on my DVR but it might not be next year.    

What Would You Do?

Ever since Oprah got her OWN network I have been over indulging in life changing TV.  I am admittedly not Oprah's biggest fan and was very happy when her show finally ended (at least 5 years too late if you ask me).   http://onehappybitch.blogspot.com/2009/07/when-did-oprah-jump-shark.html

But I have to admit that a lot of the content that is on OWN is as life changing and as thought provoking as the old Oprah show and, thankfully, very light on the presence of Oprah (big plus).

There is this show called What Would You Do? which is apparently a re-airing of a show from ABC that I never saw.  Hidden camera shows make me cringe.  I hate to see the awkward situations and feel for the people who are put in them.  Candid Camera, Punked and other shows like that have never been my thing.  But this show is different.  It uses actors to create morally questionable situations and then films how real people react to these situations.  This show is not only a great social experiment but it makes you question how you would react in the same situations.  

As good as this show is, several episodes get backed up on my DVR before I have the courage to sit down and watch one.  This is because the show make me cry every time.  I cry with happiness for the innocent people who do the right thing and for all the people who don't.  I cry because I know these scenarios are based on things that have happened in real life.  This show makes me ashamed of the apathy of society and the prevalence of prejudice.  

One episode that sticks out in my mind was of kids vandalizing cars at a public park.  The park was in a middle class neighborhood in New Jersey and the experiment was done on a very busy Saturday morning.  When the vandals were white kids some people called the cops or confronted the kids but a lot of people just walked past.  But when the vandals were black kids the response was almost immediate and much more aggressive.  When questioned, the people said that they would have reacted the same way if the kids were white but that clearly wasn't what the experiment showed.  

It seemed like in this very white middle class neighborhood, the people assumed that the white kids were some kids from the neighborhood who were just fooling around.  But those black kids, no they clearly couldn't live there, they weren't from the neighborhood.  They were a threat.  Because if media has taught us anything its that young black men are thugs and young white men are just goofing off.  Maybe that's a stretch but I can tell you that people often make assumptions about me solely based on my race.  The people who make these assumptions don't seem to have ever had any meaningful conversations with a black person.  Media must play a role in how they form their opinions because it's not coming from life experience. 

The worst part of this episode was how many people called the police to report a group of black people sleeping in their car in the park.  This was not an experiment set up by the show but a real situation that occurred during the planned scenario.  People were calling to say that they thought they were casing the park and potentially going to rob it.  This was a story that the white people created in their heads because they had been taught to fear black people. Because these people who didn't look like them didn't belong in their neighborhood.  These were a few people taking a nap in their car.  I can't express how harmless this situation was.  I wish they would have re-created the situation with a white family.  I bet no one would have called.  

The crazy thing was that these calls came in while the white kids were vandalizing cars.  So these people took the time to call the police to report black people minding their own business and ignored the white people breaking the law.  It makes me sad.  

I wish this were required viewing for everyone.  It should be a required class from elementary school through college, like English, because it is just as important.  Knowing how to properly punctuate a sentence is a pretty worthless skill unless you're going to become an English teacher.  Learning how to accept people from different backgrounds and live in harmony with people that are different than you is essential.  I don't think society will ever be perfect but it would be a hell of a lot better if people talked about these things and didn't pretend like the don't exist.  In every episode I learn something else about myself.  I hope that I am one of the good people that would do the right thing.  But I don't know how I would react if confronted with a situation like this.  That is the beauty of the show.  It's easy to say what you would do when you are sitting on your couch.  But in real life, how many of us would be cowards?  How many of our hidden prejudices would reveal themselves?  

What happened to my shows?

I fell in love with Glee from the pilot episode. I loved that there was a running story line and great covers of songs. It was a like a mini Broadway musical every week with combined with a teenage soap opera. There have been a couple of bright spots this season but, for the most part, it's not living up to it's own hype this year. The story lines are all over the place and there is almost no connection between the different episodes. They seem more focused on having a "theme" episode than on good writing. I hope that this is just a slump and the smart, original show that I fell in love with last year will come back.

The Soup is another show that has lost it's way. It used to be a compilation of the best clips from shows on TV from the past week mixed with witty commentary and surprise special guests. A lot of the clips aren't very funny any more. It seems like Joel Mchale, the host, is trying his hand at stand up (not good) and depending on his jokes and not the clips to get a laugh. The special guests are completely scripted and are on to promote their latest project rather than add to the show. It's like one big commercial.

I know good TV doesn't last forever but I had hoped these two shows would. Sigh

Because the Deaf Kid Might Be a Jerk

My husband and I are currently watching season 14 of the Amazing Race (casttv.com and youtube are great if you missed prior seasons of some of your favorite shows). One of the featured teams is a deaf kid and his mom. Initially we were rooting hard for this team but we aren't liking them so much any more.

The mother totally smothers the kid (who's like 20 by the way) and refuses to accept that he might not be perfect. The kid is completely whiny and totally gossips on other teams. Well in the last episode (8 or 9 I think) the deaf kid pushed a female member of another team twice to try to get the clue before her. It was very clear the deaf kid started it and was being physical when it wasn't necessary. So of course when he is confronted him and his mom pull the deaf card.

All of the sudden they're bitching about how he's had to struggle his whole life with people making assumptions about him because he's deaf and they should be ashamed of themselves, etc. Last I checked, being deaf doesn't turn you into a saint. If this kid weren't deaf all the other teams would be calling him out for being physical when he didn't have to. But sadly I think its going to go the other way and the deaf kid will prevail.

My father was physically handicapped for my entire life. He was paralyzed, had slurred speech and was blind. There was nothing mentally wrong with him; he was one of the smartest people that I ever met. But my dad had a temper. His father was physically and emotionally abusive and a total drunk. Like a good Catholic, my dad never talked about this so he had a lot of pent up anger. My dad was an asshole sometimes. There is no doubt about it. And if he was acting like an asshole I hope someone told him that he was. I know my mom did. She wasn't disrespecting his disability. She was pointing out that he was being a jerk and rightly so.

It pisses me off that every time there is a "special" person I'm not supposed to expect anything from them. Isn't that worse? Aren't I supposed to treat them equally? So deaf people, blind people, people with kids, old people, people in wheelchairs, morbidly obese people and anyone else who thinks you get a free pass in life because it hasn't been all roses and sunshine in your life: watch out. I'm all about equal rights and if your an asshole I'm going to treat you like every other asshole out there.

Adoption Diaries

I have always had a fascination with adoption. While I don't want to have children, I have always felt that if I did I would adopt. I'm guessing that whatever it is inside me that drives me to rescue animals that other people have cast aside and deemed "less desirable" than other animals is what would drive me to adopt a child.

I have seen every episode of a An Adoption Story on Discovery Channel Health at least twice. Unfortunately they stopped making new episodes several years ago. So I was very excited when I heard that the Women's Entertainment (WE) was reviving the show. I have watched two episodes and don't plan on watching any more. The new show only focuses on open adoptions of newborns and doesn't even present the other types of adoptions that are out there.

I can understand the appeal of open adoption to a young mother who doesn't feel that she can raise the child but doesn't want to lose all communication with the child. And I guess if you really want to have a newborn baby then open adoption would appeal to prospective adoptive parents as well. Personally, if I carried a child to term, that would be my baby. I would find a way to make that child fit into my life. After being pregnant for 9 months and going through labor and all the emotional highs and lows that accompany the miracle that is childbirth I would be emotionally destroyed if I gave up that child. My husband had a vasectomy. We knew we didn't want children so we did the responsible thing rather than deal with an unwanted and unplanned pregnancy. But if we were in the <1% of people who find themselves pregnant after surgical sterilization then we would make it work. I am a strong believer that everything happens for a reason. Whether you want to call it religion or spirituality, I would not fight the universe if it were so determined to give my husband and I a child. I would accept that there were forces much greater than us plotting our future and not question it.

Millions of people do it every day but I just can't get past the adoptive parents having to share their child with the birth mom forever. The obligation to keep the birth mom in the child's life would just be too big a price to pay for me as an adoptive parent. The best part of the old show on Discovery Channel Health was that it focused on all different types of adoptions. There were open adoptions but there were also adoptions of older children domestically and abroad, the adoption of babies and infants domestically and abroad and the adoption of children by foster parents. By showing all of the different types of adoptions and how successful and happy the families were in the end it opened people's minds to the other options that were out there if you couldn't or didn't want to have a child naturally.

There is no shortage of parents looking to adopt newborn babies in this country. On the flip side, there are plenty of children that age out of foster care every year. Meaning that they live in a group home or foster families until they reach 18 years old and then are thrown out into the world to make a life for themselves. Can you imagine waiting for parents year after year after being abandoned by your birth parents? I can't imagine the psychological damage that this does to a person. The movie Antwone Fisher, starring Denzel Washington, tells the true story of someone who went through the experience of aging out of foster care and how it affected his life. The movie received mixed reviews but the message from the story is undeniable: growing up without a solid family structure prevents you from having a fully developing emotionally as a healthy adult. Note that a solid family structure can exist in a home with a single parent, grandparents/aunts/siblings and from a gay couple and an unstable homelife can come from a two parent household.

I think open adoption is a great option for people who insist on having a newborn child and I think it is a much more reasonable option than fertility treatments that lead to litters of children and present a greater health risk to both the other and the child. But I think that by only focusing on the segment of adoption that doesn't need any promotion, WE is doing quite a disservice to the general public and the unadopted children of this country.

The Biggest Loser

I am totally obsessed with all forms of weight loss, make over and surgery reality shows. My perfect show would start with someone losing 100 lbs, then having plastic surgery to remove the excess skin and then have a fabulous style and life makeover to fit their new healthy body. When the Biggest Loser first came out I was obsessed with the show. But, like most things, I have found that I don't enjoy it any more and the show has definitely lost its purpose.

What I don't understand is why people have to be kicked off these shows. What would be so terrible about letting everyone stay in the house and benefit from the expert advice for as long as they can? You have a better chance of teaching these people how to lead healthy lives if you have them for 12 weeks rather than 1 weeks. Then they can take what they've learned home to their families. If I got kicked off the first week on the show and still had 100 lbs to lose I would feel like I was no better off then when I first started. What had they taught me? That I wasn't fit or popular enough as the other fat kids so I needed to go home? Well that's a great self esteem boost. These people know they are a mess. That's why they come to the show. And you just confirm that they are not good enough by kicking them off and telling them to go it on their own. Well if they could go it on their own they wouldn't have needed to sign up for the show!!

If no one got kicked off, the show would still reward the person with the most significant weight loss but it would get rid of the popularity factor. Alliances are formed every season and people are often kicked off the show because people don't like them or are threatened by them. These are people who have been ridiculed for most of their lives and feel horrible about themselves and all this show does is turn contestants into the same jerks that used to ridicule them. I find myself routing against many of the contestants by the end of the show because they have become such miserable people.

I remember in the earlier seasons that everyone was pulling for the success of all of the participants. Yes, it was still a competition but more importantly it was about not being morbidly obese and taking control of your life. Even the trainers have turned into children, forming cliques with certain contestants, talking about other contestants behind their backs. It is just sad. And the overly staged product placement is completely out of hand. Clearly you are making a ton of money off endorsements. You don't have to shove it in our faces so shamelessly.

And why isn't there a therapist on this show? No one gets to be morbidly obese and doesn't have any emotional issues that caused it. By treating the symptom (being fat) and not the cause you are just setting that person up for failure long term. I remember seeing an Oprah Show several years back about people who had developed new addictions after having gastric bypass surgery. There were sex addicts, alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, etc. The bottom line was that whatever had caused their food addiction or emotional eating in the first place had not been cured. I've heard that you're not ready to tackle any diet plan unless you can truthfully answer these three questions: Why are you overweight? Why do you want to lose weight? and Why haven't you been able to maintain weight loss in the past? Without showing the contestants and the viewers at home that losing weight is more than just starving yourself and working out they are setting everyone up for failure.

The saddest part of all of this is that many of the former winners and contestants who lost a lot of weight have gained the weight back. Because the show didn't teach them how to maintain a healthy diet and exercise program for life. It taught them how to eat much less most normal people eat and then has them work out for 4-8 hours a day. There is no job, no family, no responsibilities to schedule your eating and workouts around. No taste of any of the factors that derail us in the real world. They don't talk about these failures on the show. They just keep bringing back the successful losers to motivate the current losers with the illusion that what they are doing at the Biggest Loser ranch will translate to real life. It's not much of a reality show at this point.

Soccer Moms Have Taken over My TV

I'm not sure when it happened but slowly the target demographic for television producers has become soccer moms. It started subtly in the early 2000's with my favorite channels, Discovery Health Channel (DHC) and TLC, dumping a lot of their original content for new, mom friendly, TV. Traditionally these channels had great real-life stories without the crap and created drama that you often find on reality shows on network TV and basic cable channels.

DHC had Adoption Stories, A Reunion Story, Plastic Surgery Before and After, I Lost It and countless other shows that were as interesting as they were educational.
Slowly, the quality shows stopped being produced and baby-related shows took over the line up. Shows about high risk pregnancies, then shows that follow the mom's home from the hospital, shows about the obstetricians that work at the hospitals, shows about women who are models and have babies, etc, etc. I get it. Soccer moms are home all day and apparently all they want to do is watch other moms on TV. So to hell with the rest of us. I thought the original shows on DHC appealed to a wide audience but I guess that was the problem. DHC decided to put all their eggs in one basket and go for the soccer mom market. Adoption Stories and I Lost It stopped making new episodes years ago but they still come on every day. I still tune in every now and again hoping to catch an episode that is new to me but am usually disappointed by the same episodes that I've seen over and over again. Other shows like A Reunion Story will show up in reruns late at night every once in a while but its all old shows. One of the gems, Buff Brides, has been copied by new shows like Bulging Brides but they definitely don't have the same depth as the original show.

This is also the channel that introduced us to Dr. Oz and Dr. Roisen, the ground breaking diet and lifestyle doctors who have since sold their souls to Oprah and ABC. It started with special appearances on Oprah a few days before a new special would air. They would show a condensed version of the specials on Oprah. Skipping a lot of the content in the middle due to time constraints but giving away the back story and the ending and interviewing the success story live on the show. When you watched the actual special you enjoyed it because there was so much content that Oprah had skipped but by the end you were bored because you knew the ending. Now you'll see the doctor's all over network TV showing bits of the special to everyone from Diane Sawyer to Rachel Ray not to mention the weekly appearance of Dr. Oz on Oprah. I think the purpose of this excessive promotion was to get more people to watch but I think it had the opposite effect; less people watching Discovery Channel Health and more people watching Oprah. So of course, Discovery Health Channel's ratings are sagging so who swoops in to save it? Oprah of course. She bought the station but apparently won't take over until 2010. I'm sure by then the station will be known as Oprah TV or some other self-serving title and the line up will be unbearable. DHC used to be my go to channel but now I don't even recognize it most of the time.

TLC is part of the Discovery Channel family, like DHC, but had more of a mainstream appeal. My college roommates and I would come home from class and watch A Makeover Story, A Dating Story and A Wedding Story back to back to back when we got home from class. A Baby Story also came on in the middle somewhere but that was usually a great time for us to get up and make a snack or respond to e-mails. And of course, Trading Spaces, the cultural phenomenon of my generation, was born here. I think that it was funny that at a time when none of us had any space of our own, we were obsessed with a home makeover show. It was the great personalities among the designers and the carpenters and the quirky, albeit at times annoying, host. By the time I was a homeowner, Trading Spaces had hit the big time; everyone watched it and talked about it. So of course, as the show becomes more popular, designers and carpenters leave the show to try to make a name for themselves on their own shows. You will find Trading Spaces alumni all over your TV schedule but none of them have created shows of the same quality as those early seasons of Trading Spaces. When ratings started to plummet, Trading Spaces experimented with contests and new designers and even brought Paige back to try and revitalize the show but it fizzled out and was cancelled with minimal fanfare.

I remember watching The Duggar Family- 12 Kids and Pregnant Again or some similar title years ago. I was obsessed with this family from the first special on TLC. Not only did they have 12 kids but they had a great attitude and great family unity. I am not a religious person but I didn't find their strong faith to be a distracting factor, like it is in a lot of other shows. It was just great to see a family that was living within their means. They had no debt but they managed to run a household with 6 times the kids of the average household. They even home school their children in addition to running the most efficient household that I've ever seen. It feels like I am often surrounded by incompetent parents and their maladjusted children throwing tantrums in Target or making a scene at a restaurant. While a large number of parents that I encounter don't seem to want to be accountable for or just aren't capable of adequately providing a healthy upbringing for their one or two children, the Duggar's were flourishing with their 12, 14, 16 kids and raising well adjusted children that will grow up to be productive adults. Every year, TLC would have a new Duggar Special and I loved watching it. Of course now you can find the Duggars on 18 Kids and Counting. I still watch every episode but the show has definitely lost some of its specialness. The once a year 1-2 hour specials went a lot deeper into the family and their adventures than the 30 minute weekly shows that often contain some very obviously staged parts. Before it seemed like TLC was content to provide the Duggar's story documentary style, recording the events of their lives with minimal intrusion. Now there are staged events, like a trip to Dollywood, that come across very awkward and un-Duggar. The Duggar's watch 4 hours of TV a month and didn't even know who Dolly Parton was but of course there were two episodes dedicated to them going to Dollywood and meeting her. It was an hour long commercial for Dollywoood and very un-Duggar.

Now you will find at least 4 other shows on TLC that focus on families with a lot of kids. Jon and Kate Plus 8, of course, has become the face of TLC. I cannot grasp the appeal of this train wreck of a family and couldn't believe that anyone was surprised when the couple announced they were splitting up this year. I have watching no more than a few minutes of this show at a time but every time I watched it I felt like this was a very unhappy couple who should tell the cameras to get out of their lives and focus on building their relationship and raising their children. When Kate started appearing on Dr. Phil and other shows as a guest I couldn't help but wonder what was going on with her husband and kids at home and how did a women with 8 kids have time to do the talk show circuit regularly. The existence of this show and the cult like following that it has makes me sad for the hundreds of thousands of children that sit around waiting to be adopted. Apparently having twins and sextuplets is okay because you'll get a reality show and that will help you provide for your family.

I think that being a parent is a wonderful thing but that if you are not physically able to have children naturally then maybe that has happened to you for a reason. Maybe there is a child out there waiting for you to raise it. I have had the pleasure of having many adopted friends throughout my life and always felt that if I were to have children, that I would adopt. Human beings are not dogs and were not meant to have litters of children. The possibility of health problems for both the mother and the children grows dramatically as the number of children increases. There are the rare cases where people naturally have 4+ children but they do not receive nearly the attention of the Jon & Kate's and the Octomom's (who will surely be on TLC soon).

You have to go through a rigorous screening process to become an adopted parent. You have to prove to a number of qualified, state appointed individuals that you are capable of providing for a child. I wish that fertility doctor's would put their patients through half the screening that adoptive parents go through and that, just like adoption, under qualified candidates would be turned away if they didn't pass the minimum requirements. In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and other doctor-assisted means of becoming pregnant are very planned situations. This gives the medical professionals plenty of time to thoroughly screen every patient before determining that they are ready to become a parent and that their relationship is strong enough to survive the difficult, and often disappointing, road of fertility treatments.

Sadly, it seems that a willing insurance company or an empty credit card are the only prerequisites for these procedures. I have a niece/nephew on the way by IVF and am very happy for the expectant couple. I hope she carries the baby to term without any complications. But I can't help but think of the reservations that the husband expressed in confidence about not being ready to be a parent when they started this journey two years ago. He never shared these feelings with his wife and just attended all the appointments and went through all the procedures that she had scheduled. While he seems genuinely ecstatic that he is having a child, I worry that he will not feel this way later. Some pre-pregnancy counseling to ensure that the relationship was stable before adding a child to it wouldn't have detracted from this experience at all and would have made them a stronger couple. Both future parents have a history of difficult pregnancies and miscarriages on both sides of the families so we are all holding out breath until she gets deeper into the pregnancy.

I think that there is a place for all of these shows on television, I just don't think they should be all that is on. I would like to see a variety of different shows on television that appeal to a broader audience. How about instead of 10 shows about people who have a dozen children, let's just have 4 and then have 6 other real life shows about people who aren't pregnant. I love my DVR and wish that it was around years ago when TV was better and there was a lot more to record. Now I use my DVR to record the few gems that still come on TV and to sift through the crap. Us non-moms watch a lot of TV and buy products too. How about throwing us a bone every now and again.

When Did Oprah Jump the Shark?

For those of you not familiar with the term "jump the shark" it refers to when TV show has gone past its prime. It came from the episode of Happy Days when the Fonze jumped over a shark. It was definitely a sign that it was time for them to call it quits. There used to be a really great website that had a running dialogue on every show you could think of and why it jumped the shark and when but TV Guide has purchased it and now the website has jumped the shark.

I used to watch The Oprah Winfrey Show religiously as a kid. My mom taped her soap operas and Oprah every day and then sat down on the weekends and caught up on the past five days. I could never wait to watch it with her so I would rewind the tape every day when I got home from school so I could watch Oprah before she got home. I got in trouble a couple of times for messing up the tape but I never stopped doing it.

I think the Oprah show started in 1986 when I was 10 years old. Initially, I watched Oprah because my mom watched but it wasn't long before I was hooked too. I remember her talking about subjects that no one else talked about. It was the only place on TV where you could find real stories about real people. It seemed like all of the other talk shows were manipulating the stories to make them more "TV friendly" but they just came across as fake and hollow. You couldn't go a week on Oprah without laughing your head off or crying your eyes out. And she let the audience talk. She let them ask the guests questions and truly be a part of the show so even if part of the show was rehearsed, much of it couldn't be. She was truly a pioneer in her heyday. But she lost it and I wish that she would quit now before it gets any worse.

My Personal Jump the Shark Moments

1. She rarely does anything to focus on beauty tips for women of color. I remember that during one of her "answer the viewer's letters" shows someone asked her about her hair. Her hair stylist noted that most black women with thick, coarse hair, like Oprah's washed their hair on average once a week (and many go much longer). It was a comment that he made in passing before answering the viewer question. Before the hairstylist could complete his thought, Oprah jumped in and said "My hair gets washed every other day!!! I don't want you to think I have week old hair". Washing your hair every other day is horrible for your hair if you have hair like Oprah's. This is definitely something that she started doing as an adult, after she got famous and at her request because no hair stylist or person who has that type of hair would ever recommend it. I don't know what would be worse: Oprah washing her hair excessively to try to fit in with the mostly white crowd she is surrounded by or Oprah implying that there is something wrong or dirty about black women who don't wash their hair as frequently as she does. I looked at the TV and thought, she has truly forgotten where she came from and has become a completely different person.

2. When she started promoting other TV shows on her show. It started with many of the Discovery Channel Health doctors frequently showing up on her show but then it branched out to whatever was new on ABC or featured in Time Magazine. She was no longer original or relevant; she had truly sold out. She was just another TV drone reporting the same story that 7 other talk shows were talking about and getting paid handsomely for it.

3. When she stopped caring about her guests and her audience. You used to feel like you knew a lot of the Oprah guests personally. An entire show would be dedicated to one topic, if not one person, and there would be several follow up shows to keep you updated on that person's progress. We, the viewer, were personally invested in these people because we had gone through the struggles with them as their stories unfolded on her show. And someone in the audience would have a similar story or be inspired to change their lives because of the story.

Now she will cram multiple topics and guests into the same show and give very little time to each story. She hasn't let the audience talk in years. She doesn't cry, she doesn't react to what the people are saying, she doesn't even appear to be listening. She has her little blue card with questions and she just runs through them. She is so apathetic and cold that it is difficult to watch.

The worst was when the young girl was rescued from her kidnappers and Oprah had her and her family on the show the day after the rescue. It was sensationalism at its worst and a sign that Oprah had sunken to the depths of other empty talk shows vying for ratings. This was really obvious to me when I watched the 20th anniversary DVDs in 2006. It was so obvious how great the show used to be and how bad it had become over the years. If I were her and I watched those tapes, I would have been ashamed what the show is like now compared to how it used to be.

4. When she stopped having an opinion. I remember that she had Tiger Woods on several times because she was a fan of his. I remember every Will Smith movie getting an entire Oprah show dedicated to it. There were movies, music and people that I had never heard of that Oprah promoted because they appealed to her personally, not because they were the most popular thing of the moment. Now every time a TV show is successful or a movie has a crazy amount of buzz she will feature it on her show. It's a sad desperate attempt to grab ratings but why would anyone watch when you're promoting the same thing that 10 other media outlets are getting paid to promote at the same time.

5. When her target audience became 2% of the population. So many shows dedicated to stay at home moms finding themselves, or putting the spark back in your marriage and any number of topics that seem focused on a very tight demographic. I'm okay with that every once in a while but the upper class woman is not the average woman. The worst is that the makeovers on a budget shows that don't feature clothes from JcPenney or Old Navy or some other store that most of the population can afford to shop at. No, it's all of these high end stores where a sweater costs $150 and Oprah says "Oh wow, that's so cheap" and the cameraman zooms in on all of these audience members that appear to agree that its a great deal. It's like she's been rich for so long that she's just out of touch with what is normal. And she isn't married and doesn't have any kids so why do 70% of her shows seem to focus on people who do?

Oprah is well past her prime and should quit now before her show becomes so bad that its cancelled. Her shameless behavior during the past presidential election would have been a great opportunity for her to leave the TV show behind and move into another career. But of course this didn't happen and it doesn't appear to be on the horizon. It's a shame because we could use some good TV these days.

Trailers Gone Wild

I love watching movies. My husband and I go to the movie theater almost every week. We have an unlimited Netflix membership and our DVR is often full to capacity because we tape more movies than we can watch. One of the best parts about going to the movies is seeing all the trailers for upcoming releases. In the past few years the trailers have become spoilers for the movies they are promoting.

The last comedy I saw was "The Hangover". While it was a pretty good movie all of the funny parts were shown during the trailer and during the nonstop commercials for the movie leading up to its release. It was hard to really get into the movie because I knew what was going to happen. Whatever happened to the cryptic trailers that didn't tell you anything about the movie? I can understand wanting to drum up a little interest but you don't have to show the entire movie. It would have been amazing if Mike Tyson suddenly showed up on screen and no one knew he was going to be in the movie. But everyone knew and there was only polite laughter and not the huge response the film makers would have gotten otherwise. It's not a cameo if you promote the crap out of it in the trailer and during every commercial break.

Luckily, I watch a lot of independent and foreign films that don't get a lot of press in the mainstream media. I usually hear about these movies while listening to NPR or reading Time Magazine. When I see these movies I get the full movie experience. Sometimes I know little more than the basic plot of these movies. I am happy that Amelie, Little Miss Sunshine and Slumdog Millionaire (and several others) were all movies that I saw based on NPR interviews and that I never saw a trailer or interview on Good Morning America about it until after I had seen the movies. I didn't really know what I was getting myself into in any of these cases but I was very happy with all three choices.

In addition to the movie trailers, I'm annoyed with television programs showing you a summary of the entire show immediately before the show comes on and at every commercial break. Seriously, stop it. I want to watch the show. I rarely watch live TV any more because I have to sing songs and put my fingers in my ears at every commercial break to avoid getting the entire plot of the 30 minute show. The DVR and the ability to skip all the commercials has saved my sanity but it still bugs me.

I don't understand the logic of all of these over previewing. Was there a demand for this? Who made the decision to give the milk away for free even though everyone was still buying cows? Grrr...