There are so many wrong answers to this question.

ABC has a new show called "What Would You Do?" and I hadn't even seen promos for it. I'll admit that I was drawn to it because of another show with the same name that I was very familiar with once upon a time.

But this show is creeping the hell out of me. Here's the premise: the show's producers create artificial situations using actors who break social rules or commit major transgressions. Then they watch how people around them react to the dilemma. Will the person confront the transgressor? Will the person say nothing? It's like a truly disturbing Candid Camera.

In the segment I just watched, two actors--a man and a woman--are in a restaurant pretending to be on a first date. They're having drinks at a bar. The woman excuses herself to go to the bathroom, the man makes small talk with the people sitting next to him, and then after a moment, he slips something into his date's drink--in such a way that the person next to him sees this.

Very few people, it seems, say anything or warn the woman. A couple of people call the bartender to the side to report what they've seen. Most seem to not want to get involved. And this only gets worse when the woman is wearing a lower-cut dress with bright and flashy colors, as opposed to the first part of the segment, when she's wearing a simple black dress. This dismissal of the woman who, as far as they know, is about to be drugged and raped is frighteningly dependent on how she's dressed and thus who they assume she is.

The show lauds the heroism on the part of the few on step in. It's depressing to think that this is the exception and not the norm.

I found this video clip, which doesn't show the whole segment. It leaves out one woman who not only confronts the man who drugged the drink, but also warns the woman and goes to the bathroom to check if the woman is ok after having sipped the drink. It also leaves out the part where the "hero" who confronts the guy also threatens to hit his wife if she doesn't be quiet.

In which I turn on the TV and get all angry.

I'm home from work today, and while flipping through channels, I've come across one of the most atrocious things I've even encountered on TV--even on MTV. They are doing an hour-long promo for the premiere of the show, Exiled, tonight. Apparently, it's a spin-off of the Sweet Sixteen series, where they take the same spoiled brats previously featured, and ship them off to faraway countries.

And of course we will undoubtedly watch them throw tantrums over having to live in poor communities where their parents' credit card will do them no good and where they are actually expected to work. Oh, and not get waited on hand and foot. What's infuriating me is, first of all, that they don't appreciate that even this experience, being able to travel abroad, is a privilege. It's a chance that they are spitting on and, most importantly, they are disrespecting and insulting the people in the communities who have agreed to host them.

This show seems to exemplify the image of the rude American, who really doesn't give a shit about anything that happens outside of this country's borders and would rather concentrate on buying more stuff. And if anything happens to intrude on that perception, it is only an annoying inconvenience. I try to believe that most people aren't like that, which is probably why this new show gets me so riled.

Maybe there's a good side. Maybe there will be some conclusion where they learn to appreciate the chance they've been giving and learn the value of interacting with people who've had different experiences. Maybe it will broaden their horizons and maybe people watching it here in the U.S. will learn something. Then again, maybe it will be just more of the same, with non-stop whining and moaning.

Sex in Hollywood.

So yes, this is a little behind schedule. But I do have something to say about The Real World: Hollywood, which I have indeed been keeping up with.

What is up with the girls in that house? Yes, I'm talking about you, Kim and Sarah. And I'm not even talking about "Ghetto"-gate from a couple of weeks ago. It seems that on every episode, they have something mean and judgmental and snarky to say about Brianna. And it's always in reference to Brianna having sex or who she takes home or how she acts when they're out or what she wears.

Of course, Kim and Sarah always couch their criticism in concern (or condemnation) for Brianna's level of self-respect. They presume that her choices, like to be an exotic dancer, come from self-hatred or a lack of self-esteem. And maybe there is some truth to that, but who's to know? They presume to know Brianna's reasons and to know her mind.

Quotable quotes.

This blog post is at the request of Stonewall.

"Politics is not a team sport." -Chris Matthews, May 6, 2008.

For some people, it's all about the ego.

UPDATE:

"Regular people want to know that you share their enemies." -Chris Matthews, May 6, 2008.

Who are my enemies...? I must not be a regular person.

Primary madness.

Another big primary night, and I'm thinking about skipping the TV coverage and going out to dinner with Stonewall instead. But I'm watching now.

Chris Matthews just asked someone about whether the Jeremiah Wright issue didn't have as much impact as "some people would have hoped." Yeah, like you, Chris?

And speaking of Jeremiah Wright, I caught his interview with Bill Moyers on PBS last weekend. I had first heard of Jeremiah Wright in the context of reading about the anti-apartheid movement in the U.S., so my first introduction to him was not through the relentlessly repeated 5-second sound bites on TV or on the internet. It was refreshing to be reintroduced to that man. It was especially refreshing to be able to watch full-length clips of the sermons in question, so you could see the entire point that he was making -- and not just a disjointed climax. Watch the video here.

I can't say that I'm a regular Bill Moyers viewer, but I might be a fan. Imagine this: a conversation between two people, relatively uninterrupted, non-combative, in which each side is allowed to express an idea. Revolutionary.

And this was also interesting: Was It Really What Jeremiah Wright Said, Or Was It Because He's Black?

Hero complexes.

Watching a segment on Paul Farmer on 60 Minutes... Since reading Mountains Beyond Mountains a few years ago, my first reaction to anything having to do with Paul Farmer is always positive. But I'm instinctively suspicious of how 60 Minutes might decide to portray him and his work and the issues.

...pause to finish watching the segment...

My first thought is that I sorta want to read Mountains Beyond Mountains again. Because when I read it the first time, I was so fundamentally moved and inspired. Not only by his vision and his understanding of what the right to health means (that no one should be denied the right to health care because of the poverty that results from the accident of their birth) but the network of people that were attracted to that vision and who helped him to build it.

And Paul Farmer is an inspiring person, if only because of his strategy for building his organization or for making it possible to deliver health care. In the 60 Minutes segment, they talk about how Partners in Health, the organization he co-founded, will survive after he is gone because it is run by Haitian physicians in Haiti and Rwandan physicians in Rwanda and so on. PIH depends on community health workers to reach out to patients living in rural or difficult-to-reach areas. So in the end, it's not really about Paul Farmer. His vision would never have come about if there wasn't an army of people equally committed to that vision.

But we can never talk about it that way. By "it," I suppose that I mean Changing the World or however we might put it. It's why we talk about any great change in terms of the great people who represented that change. So Martin Luther King, Jr. becomes a stand-in for the civil rights movement, or Mandela for the anti-apartheid movement, or Gandhi for the independence movement. And we forget that the change they represent would have meant nothing without a mass movement of people who believed in the same ideas.

It's more exciting to tell a "hero" story, though. About the strength of an individual who changes the course of history. And the reality is not quite as "sellable." That change comes about in usually mundane ways, created by people who will be generally forgotten.