If There's a God, He's Embarrassed And It's No Secret Why

For Halloween this year, I decided to be pop-culture savvy and abandon my traditional "walk of shame" costume (short shorts, oversized t-shirt, messy hair and smeared makeup -- it's easy and fun!) and go as Kate Gosselin. That's my dear friend Alex on the right, as Jon (complete with Ed Hardy shirt.)

It was a funny costume, mainly because anyone who has seen me and Alex interact for extended periods of time can draw parallels between us and the Gosselins. But there's something to be said for the fact that Jon and Kate have pervaded the public mindset so much that they've been reduced to Halloween costumes. Trying to pull this costume together, I Googled "Kate Gosselin wig" and got 6 million hits. When your hairstyle is a national inside joke, you know something's wrong.

The Gosselins and their probably deeply disturbed brood are part of a phenomenon that my COMM 411H class likes to call "humilitainment" -- entertainment based solely on someone else's embarrassment. Humilitainment is nothing new -- after all, laughing at other people's foibles and falls from grace is about as human as it gets -- but these days it's everywhere, from the horrible audition episodes of American Idol to the Numa Numa dance to Mark Sanford's delightfully batty press conference confessing his infidelity.

In a lot of ways, the media is to blame for the pervasiveness of humiliation-fueled entertainment -- they basically capitalize on one of our basest instincts by offering up a heaping platter of shows featuring people so depraved they make us feel better about ourselves. At least we're not overweight train wrecks with poor singing skills and failed marriages, we say to ourselves. At least we're not as stupid as Paris Hilton or as messed up as the addicts on "Intervention."

I'm not sure what the solution to humilitainment is. I'm not sure if there is one, if only because watching people make fools of themselves is a grand tradition that would require a collective worldwide effort to stop. I do think that shows that really capitalize on human failure -- like "Jackass" and dreck like "Charm School" -- are unnecessary. If reality television is what we need to prove to ourselves that we're better than the unwashed masses, maybe we're not so much better than them after all.

Thoughts? Questions? Comments? Solutions? Post 'em in the comment section, please.

Tuesday Newsday: Too Much History, Too Much Biography?

Note: The news industry is pretty insane right now -- but pretty fascinating, too. On Tuesdays, I'll be blogging about journalism -- how it's changing, who's shaping it, and what's next for the news. Thus, happy Tuesday Newsday, kids.



When the management of a major metropolitan daily newspaper decides to publish their Twitter accounts instead of their names on the masthead, you know something is changing.

This, if you couldn't tell, is the March 19 masthead of the venerable Chicago Tribune, one of my favorite papers and, coincidentally, one of the most troubled papers in the country right now.

So it's interesting that just a few months after its parent company declared bankruptcy, the Tribune printed a masthead devoted to one of the more pervasive aspects of new media journalism. Twitter is what you might call a "microblog," a vast aggregator of millions of people's 140-character status updates. At its worst, it's vapid, narcissistic, and completely pointless.

At its best, though, it's kind of the coolest thing ever. Wade through the masses of voyeuristic losers and you find really, really awesome journalists -- not just sitting there navel-gazing but delving in-depth into their reporting, taking you inside newsrooms across the country and around the world.

I follow way too many journalists on Twitter -- Daniel Victor from the Harrisburg Patriot-News, Chris Krewson from the Philadephia Inquirer, the adorable freelance blog queen Ana Marie Cox -- and while stalking my fellow newsies is admittedly a mildly pathetic way to spend my time, it's convinced me that Twitter isn't just for the self-absorbed yuppies that make up its majority. It's taught me that in the midst of layoffs left and right, of venerable papers collapsing like dominoes, there is a small subset of journalists who are embracing new media and making it work.

A few months ago, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill had a bomb scare on campus. Zach Tracer, a reporter for Duke's student paper, was on the scene and reporting -- but before filing a web update, he was posting everything he saw to Twitter. Watching updates come in instantly in real time was fascinating -- and yeah, it might speak to what my parents enjoy calling "the instant-gratification culture," but at the same time, it shows a remarkable willingness to adapt and innovate. Twittering the news is not going to make us any money in the short run, but maybe it's part of what will save us in the end.