I'm a public policy researcher with a think tank based in New York City. A few months ago my organization co-published
a report on low-income working families in New York state, which was pretty well received by the policy community, local and state officials, and the media with significant coverage in the New York Times, Albany Times-Union and other outlets around the state. Bob Herbert also prominently cited the report in the first column he wrote after Thanksgiving, even quoting from the intro I wrote for it. (Yes, this was a thrill.) On the other side of the political spectrum, business groups and even some Pataki administration officials had praise for the report as well.
So I'm sitting at my desk this afternoon working on something else and the phone rings.
It's a woman calling from Bravo, the TV network. "We were wondering if you could put us in touch with some of the working poor families you talk about in the report."
For what, I ask? "I work for a show called 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.' We're interested in doing something like an extreme lifestyle makeover with them."
I resisted the urge to ask if this was a joke and referred her along to one of my colleagues who did a lot of the interviewing for the report (and is considerably to my left politically). She fielded the call and then came in and we laughed about it, with that sort of mix of humor and outrage you get watching "The Daily Show."
But according to her--she apparently has watched some reality shows, which I avoid--this whole class aspect has become a big part of the appeal of shows like "Trading Spouses". So I guess it's not surprising that in a copycat environment like television, everybody is looking for their own piece of the phenomenon. Apparently there's some plan to have Paris Hilton's mother do a show in which she tries to "impart some high society class" to poor people.
I had no idea that this has become part of the entertainment landscape, and I wonder how it's affecting politics. Poverty-as-spectacle/entertainment strikes me as pretty disgusting, but maybe that's not how it comes across on the Idiot Box.