Who wants to be a trainwreck?

I don't get reality TV. I think it's the stupidest thing ever created in the entertainment industry since someone made the mistake of giving Tom Cruise his first screen test.

However, as a comics fan, I decided, what the hell, I'd give Stan Lee's 'Who Wants to be A Superhero?' a shot. Like many reality TV shows, the premise revolves taking a diverse group of people, put them together in a house and then publicly humiliate them with demeaning challenges, after which, one person gets eliminated. The twist here is that everyone has adopted a superhero identity and the challenges are designed to test their commitment to, well I'm not sure exactly what their commitment is, maybe to self-delusion. Or the how badly they need to be committed.

After three episodes, half of the originals have been told to "turn in your costume" by Stan Lee. The winner apparently will get a one shot comic written Stan Lee about their character and a made for TV movie to air on Sci-Fi's Channel's SF Saturday night. So, the whole premise of the show is to help the Sci-Fi Channel develop another low-budget cheesefest. I'm already betting that the eventual winner will be Major Victory, since he seems to be the most deluded of the bunch. I'm not sure at this point which is creepier, Major Victory's vamping around the set or see Stan Lee make godlike pronouncements over closed circuit TV.

The show does illustrate how disconnected Mr. Lee is from the company he helped create and the current comics industry in general. Stan repeatedly lectures one failed contestant how "superheroes don't kill people, they help people." I guess that's why Marvel puts a homicidal maniac like Wolverine in every one of its team books these days. Another point he makes is that superheroes never give up their secret identities. One of the examples he uses is Spider-man, who just publicly unmasked himself as Peter Parker in Marvel's big "Civil War" crossover event.

But the basic flaw of the show are the challenges. Since they acknowledge that they can't actually test the contestants on the superpowers that their character allegedly possesses, the test are designed to test issues of moral integrity: courage, honesty, commitment, etc. The problem is, the people Stan Lee is testing are reality TV show contestants. And testing people on reality TV for integrity is like giving Stevie Wonder an eye test. It's totally worthless. It's not surprising that most of them consistently fail the tests.

Useful Idiots

It's been a rough couple of weeks. Too much to do around the house, teaching three nights a week, and working the crappy day job. I made the mistake of watching the taking heads last night lament over the Lieberman getting the boot in the CT primary. You know the voters are on the right track when both the conservative and the liberal pundits are bemoaning the election results.

The communists in the old Soviet Union used to call American communists "useful idiots" - deriding them as naive idealists but at the same time, happy to make use of them for propaganda purposes. Today, Joe's biggest mistake was in allowing himself to become a "useful idiot" for the republicans. His sycophantic behavior on shows like Hannity and Colmes coupled with his willingness to attack his fellow democrats was his undoing. Many conservatives in the blogosphere have been making much about his liberal voting record, but in politics, perception is reality, and the preception of Lieberman was that he was Bush's lapdog.

On the other hand, Joe has also developed a severe case of incumbantitis. The symptons include disconnect from one's constituents and feeling of entitlement that manifests as annoyance at the very idea of having to actually campaign among the great unwashed in order to keep one's position.

So, the republicans are lamenting the loss of their favorite useful idiot, while establishment democrats are unhappy because if an 18-year vetaran of the Senate and former VP nominee can lose in a primary, anyone can. The talking heads will debate for the next week whether this is good news for the dems or the GOP, ignoring that it's actually just bad news for the incumbant class in general. People are fed up with politics as usual and want a new breed of leader. No more politicians. No more useful idiots.

We need some actual statesmen (and women) for a change.