All's Well That Ends Well

The manhunt for Ryan Jenkins ended yesterday when he was found dead in a remote Canadian motel, the victim of an apparent suicide by hanging. Way to cut your 15 minutes short.

I have to agree with Warming Glow - this is the greatest blog story, ever. Here’s a list of the elements of this story: Reality TV. VH1. Playboy model (Megan Hauserman). Strippers. Playboy model (Fiore). Vegas wedding. Marriage annulled. History of domestic violence. Strangled to death. Fingers cut off. Teeth removed. Body in a suitcase. Suitcase in a dumpster. Identified by breast implants. Escape to Canada. Motel. Suicide. Hanging. It’s like a Mad Libs of every bad internet joke ever told. The only way this could have been better is if he had hanged himself while masturbating. And there was a cat dressed as a police officer investigating.

The odd thing to me is both "Megan Wants a Millionaire" and "I Love Money 3", prominently featuring Jenkins not killing anyone, have been canceled. Scarlett, who knows about those types of shows but also is an "industry person", predicted as much last week. While their motive is to look unlike assholes if they aired it, I say why not show the shows? He didn't kill anybody on them. The advertisers have already got their prices set for ad rates, so the network can't gouge them even though they ought to get much better ratings due to the news.

I shouldn't take the blessing for granted - two shitty reality shows axed, but television, especially "reality" based programs, do nothing but exploit. Like the insufferable shows about white trash with 8 children (or the other one with an extra six), or the skanky sisters, or the regional survey of tarnished "trophy" wives. Never mind the contradiction of calling "reality" participants actors or that the shows have writing teams - they are designed to manipulate and monopolize on the most despicable, terrible people willing to literally sell their soul for what passes as fame. So why not use the footage. Don't pretend that there's a line of decency being crossed...that happened when you created, filmed, and aired the show - and you watched it.

Professional sports is full of bad people (except hockey and F1), hardly worthy of being grouped with other role models, yet they have no trouble gracing your airwaves season in and season out and allowed to play. Actors get busted for everything in the book but get movies deals and primetime series as though nothing happened. And the flood of coverage, from OJ to Michael Jackson - how the hell is that not overkill? How dare those spineless shit peddler try to grow a spine, or the audience start making demands of their bread and circus? The complaint is that that weasel escaped what was coming to him and that justice was not served. Whether it was or not, it's clear hypocrisy was served.