Hot Sex

I went to my 10-year high school reunion last weekend and couldn't find a business mogul, professional basketball player or spouse of a supermodel in the entire place. I could have been bored with the biggest claim to fame coming from a guy who thinks he started reality television, except that it's true.

You see, I spent many a wayward evening during my freshman year of college watching a new show on HBO seductively titled "Taxi Cab Confessions." My roommates and I had a good time cackling through the drunken rants, domestic spats and make-out sessions of real patrons cruising across town in the back seat of a cab. The best part? These people were foolish enough to sign the rights away to the footage once they found out that they had been filmed.

Unfortunately, the fun and games for us didn't last. One evening, we didn't change the channel when a couple got hot and bothered in the back seat of the taxi. They didn't seem to mind the driver sitting three feet away, and ended up having the kind of sex that would barely pass censors of a Hollywood feature film.

Of course, we thought this was hilarious and entertaining. That is, until the camera panned in to show the guy's face. In utter horror and disgust we discovered the culprit was a good friend we had known for years that somehow had failed to mention his budding acting career.

The next time I saw him, he pleaded with me to keep his air time on the "down low." I obliged as best I could but was quick to explain that he had chosen the wrong cable network to help him keep a lid on his secret. The episode garnered the highest ratings ever for the program and its repeated airings wreaked havoc on my poor friend's existence. Despite his obvious poor judgment, the episode put reality television into new perspective for me, and I'm fortunate to have garnered this perspective so early in the game.

The booming increase in popularity of reality television since has done nothing but solidify my distaste for it. The typical reality show delivers a voyeuristic lens into others' lives that is otherwise impossible on the typical Thursday evening. And we too easily take the perspective of that lens for granted.

American television is in a disappointing state when we're flooded with programs that objectify the misery of others to deliver a hypnotic hour (well, 46 minutes once you take out commercials) of entertainment. There was a day when families gazed into the boob tube to dream of better things. Today, we peer into other people's desperation and misfortune solely to help us feel better about our own banal existence.

Perhaps if we lived in a culture that boasted more emotional intelligence, reality television could serve as a forgivable, although greedy, indulgence. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. We grow up knowing how to read, write and report bodies of knowledge, but lack the understanding to manage the most challenging problems we face.

The current deficit in understanding and managing emotions is startling. Tests of hundreds of thousands of people reveal that only 36 percent of us are able to accurately identify our emotions as they happen, and more than 70 percent of us have difficulty handling stress and conflict. No wonder we live in a society that derives its entertainment from emotional pornography. Reality television leaves so little to the imagination because we don't possess the mind's eye needed to enjoy anything else.

Last Saturday at the reunion, I saw the taxi cab man for the first time in more than five years and quietly cringed as he boasted to a group that he had started reality television. Let's hope that in another 10 years, my generation will look back and have something more to be proud of.

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