A suspected waste of time proves to be just that

By Fred Horlbeck Dolan Media Newswires Who, I wonder, keeps up with the Kardashians? Whenever I surf cable TV, I come across ''Keeping Up with the Kardashians,'' a reality series about, you guessed it, a Hollywood fashionista family called the Kardashians, complete with socialite/actor/sex tape celebrity Kim Kardashian, et al. Usually I skip past it, but I did watch five minutes once, my curiosity piqued by reports of incredibly high ratings. Also, I wanted to see whether it was as useless as I expected it to be and to get some idea as to why E! (Entertainment Television) plasters Kim and Co. all over its airwaves. After those five minutes, I all had to say to E! was ''ewwww!'' The show was absolutely unreal, as heavy on petty squabbles, image-pandering and gratuitous gross-outs as the eyeliner caked on Kim's face. Somewhere in the segment Kim's mother, tearfully claiming co-management of some girl group apparently bent on conquering the entertainment world, managed to wet herself (and not with her tears either), a fact in which one of Kim's siblings gleefully revealed for the benefit of everyone. All in all, it was enough to answer at least one of my questions (yes, it was, indeed, as useless as I expected), but didn't begin to explain why millions of viewers tune in so predictably that E! schedules hour after hour of Kardashian episodes. I wonder what those viewers would, or could, be doing if they didn't let reality TV into their living rooms. Would they be working? Creating? Reading? Improving themselves? Bettering their communities? And, because I spend so much time talking with lawyers and seeing how they use their time, I wonder what would happen if lawyers became reality TV junkies. Would they sit glued to the tube amid the unfolding of the Kardashians' ''Match Made in Hell'' episode (the one that was both my introduction to Kim, et al., and my not-so-fond farewell)? Imagine what would happen if pro bono hours became ''Life, Celebrity Style'' hours. What if lawyers who donate time and effort to community service decided to instead sink into their armchairs and spend those priceless hours on brain-dead programs like ''Bridalplasty'' and ''Real Housewives of Atlanta''? That would never happen, you say. Lawyers are too bright, too competitive, too driven. Too vital. I think so, too. But a lot of other folks - those at whom reality shows take aim, and there are millions, to judge from the ratings - apparently are not. Lawyers, however, don't have a monopoly on brains, competitiveness, drive, professionalism or vitality, and I wonder how many more people would aspire to do wonderful things for themselves and for others if they weren't wasting their minds and time on the unreality of reality TV. Entire contents copyrighted © 2010 by Dolan Media Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is expressly forbidden. Published: Thu, Dec 23, 2010

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