Free Republic

A shoplifter, a recovering drug addict and a young couple barely able to feed their kids are among the stars of Benefits Street - a smash hit reality show featuring welfare recipients that has stirred up a storm of controversy in Britain. The program zooms in on a rough Birmingham street where 9 out of 10 people are said to live off state payouts, chronicling over five episodes the lives of jobless neighbours as they struggle with their daily problems. The show has struck a strong chord in a nation fresh out of recession and still reeling from its most...

December 31, 2013 4:00 AM Good Ol’ Boy, Inc. Reality shows about gold miners, ax men, and ice-road truckers are a far cry from the Kardashians. By Victor Davis Hanson The hysteria over Duck Dynasty reminds us that cable TV is currently inundated with working-class, white-guy reality shows. Top-drawing, relatively low-cost realities showcase gold miners, oil drillers, hunters, locomotive drivers, off-the-grid backwoods eccentrics, fishermen, crabmen, truck drivers, ax men, moonshiners, or the new generation of Beverly Hillbillies. The list of the particular subspecies of the muscular classes is endless. These shows share a few common themes. They do not take...

"........................[not to be missed "snip" ]...............So good-ol’-boy reality offers glimpses, premodern though they may be, of unrestrained freedom. In our upside-down world, the eighth-grade teacher understands that one wrong word, an ill-timed joke, a casual pat on the shoulder can end a career, pronto — while his punk student with the gang-banging parent who shouts profanity at him are mostly exempt from worry. The boss at the DMV accepts the fact that the whiff of a sexual-harassment suit, the rumor of an impending racial-discrimination allegation, the suggestion of inhospitality to the handicapped are more terrifying than the rowdy 16-year-old who...

This is a week old, but I hadn't seen this before. It's an interesting view from a gay man. GLAAD has way over stepped their bounds.

Marketing surveys now show that when Americans come home from work, more folks turn on their computers than their television sets. That is a first. The reason is twofold: First, you can create your own world on your PC, and second, TV is awful. Flat-out awful. For years, television has been losing viewers because the product, generally speaking, has collapsed. Reality TV has destroyed the tube. Cheap, mindless shows featuring people who should be deported rule the airwaves. Don't believe me? Well, TV Guide recently listed reality TV's most startling moments. The choices are indeed startling. Among them is...

Duck Dynasty kicked off its fourth season last Wednesday and they did it with a bang, raking in the highest ratings for any cable reality show in US history. Yep, last Wednesday a whopping 11.8 million people rocked up to see what was going down in the bayou at the Robertson’s household. You just know that kind of success has got to make miserable the dainty, little, progressive crowd who are trying legislatively and culturally to peel America away from the pro-God-and-country values that the cast of Duck Dynasty showcases with hairy-chinned hilarity. Indeed, without a sex tape; without shoving...

Duck Dynasty kicked off its fourth season last Wednesday and they did it with a bang, raking in the highest ratings for any cable reality show in US history. Yep, last Wednesday a whopping 11.8 million people rocked up to see what was going down in the bayou at the Robertson’s household. You just know that kind of success has got to make miserable the dainty, little, progressive crowd who are trying legislatively and culturally to peel America away from the pro-God-and-country values that the cast of Duck Dynasty showcases with hairy-chinned hilarity. Indeed, without a sex tape; without shoving...

TRIPLETT, N.C. (AP) -- The way Eustace Conway sees it, there's the natural world, as exemplified by his Turtle Island Preserve in the Blue Ridge Mountains. And then there's the "plastic, imitation" one that most other humans inhabit. But the border between the two has always been a porous one. When he bought his first 107 acres in 1987, Conway's vision for Turtle Island was as "a tiny bowl in the earth, intact and natural, surrounded by pavement and highways." People peering inside from nearby ridges would see "a pristine and green example of what the whole world once looked...

....Fame today is a matryoshka doll: inside each celebrity is a series of smaller, hollow simulacra, and, at the very core, there is a hard little being who feels buried alive. In Alexis’s gang there were four girls and three boys: the main culprit, Nick Prugo, was a gay kid working his way out of the closet. When he was eventually arrested by the police he was wearing a striped top he’d stolen from the house of the actor Orlando Bloom. And that’s what they did: after days of shopping or doing pilates, hanging out on MySpace, texting or oh-my-god-ing...

Former "Dancing With the Stars" contestant Bristol Palin is heading back to reality TV. She'll switch places with Joan Rivers on "Celebrity Wife Swap." The 22-year-old single mom and her sister Willow Palin are the latest stars to sign up for the trading-places series. And this time, they're doing double duty as the daughters of Sarah Palin head to Los Angeles to switch lives with comedian Rivers and her daughter Melissa.

#ObamaRealityTVShows is one of the latest hashtags trending on Twitter. Thought they were worth a mention and perhaps your own creative contribution! Here are some of the ones that are most popular at the moment... #ObamaRealityTVShows Last Commie Standing The BIGGEST Loser Who Wants To Be A Welfare Recipient? So You Think You Can Read A Teleprompter Wife Swap (please) Amerika's Next Dictator Extreme Makeover: Bill of Rights Big Brother (Wants to Bully You) Obama's got no talent! Extreme Country Makeover, socialist style! queer eye for the saudi guy America's Got Open Borders Dancing With the Czars Big Brother Money...

It's official. Reality-television executives have lost their minds. The reality-TV shows featuring mostly black casts debuting in 2013 are setting back images of black folks in television at least 60 years. While critics are obsessed with the controversial film Django Unchained, there is a movement taking place in reality television that has elevated black buffoonery to the highest level possible while diminishing black culture to the lowest level in recent memory. The images of blacks on TLC's reality shows Best Funeral Ever and The Sisterhood and Oxygen's All My Babies' Mamas are appalling. They are also reminiscent more of images...

People who watch non-competition reality shows are more extroverted, neurotic and have a lower self-esteem, according to a new study. The survey, conducted by Today.com polled 19,000 people and found that "those who watched non-competition reality shows are more extroverted, neurotic and have lower self-esteem than watchers who are not fans of the genre." Additionally, the survey found that 72% of women and 60% of men watch Reality television simply because they're bored. Also, 46% of women and 26% of men watch this genre because they like to see how people with money and fame live their lives. Deadliest Catch...

Submit Your Application by January 31st, 2013Glenn interviewed Peter Billingsley today on radio: WATCHGlenn Beck’s TheBlaze announced this morning that the media company would be teaming up with Wild West Productions and Go Go Luckey Entertainment to launch ‘Pursuit Of The Truth’, a new reality series to find the next great documentary film. The series will bring together twenty selected filmmakers from across the country to prove to a panel of expert judges that their project is worthy of the grand prize – financing and worldwide distribution for their feature documentary film idea.Applications are currently being accepted from filmmakers of all walks of...

January 1, 2014 is the date Americans must have medical coverage by or pay a penalty under ObamaCare. For a state like California that has an uninsured population of seven million, preparations to spread the word about the exchange are already well under way, including some propaganda planning. Abby Goodnough at the NY Times reports: Realizing that much of the battle will be in the public relations realm, the exchange has poured significant resources into a detailed marketing plan — developed not by state health bureaucrats but by the global marketing powerhouse Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, which has an initial...

At 8:46 AM, in New York City and at the White House in Washington DC, there was a moment of silence to remember when the first plane hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. In New York, the NYPD, FDNY, Port Authority Police and the families of the victims were present, while in Washington the President and the First Lady led the moment. The cable networks all carried it, with ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “CBS This Morning” carrying it as well. The only national general news program to not carry the moment of silence was NBC’s ‘Today,”...

Reality star Joey Kovar, who appeared on "The Real World: Hollywood" and "Celebrity Rehab," was found dead at a friend's home near Chicago on Friday (Aug. 17) morning, reports TMZ.

CNN could be adding a little more than the usual 24 hours of news to its lineup: the network is reportedly in talks with reality TV producers to spice up its programming schedule with some unscripted television.

Todd Palin is finally getting his 15 minutes of reality show fame. After being reduced to supporting roles on “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” and daughter Bristol’s “Life’s a Tripp,” he’ll have a turn in the spotlight tonight on NBC’s “Stars Earn Stripes.” Alaska’s former “First Dude,” 47, is one of eight celebrities competing in military-style exercise to earn money for charity. Palin and wife Sarah — now a consultant for Fox News — spoke with The Post in LA about the show, their family and life as reality TV stars. [...snip...] Q: What kind of effect have your family’s reality show...

LOS ANGELES, CA (February 29, 2012) – Lifetime has picked up Bristol Palin: Life’s a Tripp, an all-new docuseries that will provide an exclusive, rare glimpse into Bristol Palin’s real life as a young, single mother forging her own way in the world while living under the constant spotlight as a member of one of America’s most high-profile families. With never-before-granted access to Bristol’s real-life experiences growing into womanhood, Bristol Palin: Life’s a Tripp will reveal how she adjusts to her life in Alaska, where daily she faces the many pressures of raising her toddler son Tripp alone and maintains...