strib: There goes the 'Neighborhood'

[question everything]

startribune.com

Neal Justin: There goes the 'Neighborhood'

Published July 8, 2005

(snip)

ABC had the nerve to develop such a series, called "Welcome to the Neighborhood," which was to debut Sunday and run over the next six weeks.

But organizations such as the Fair Housing Alliance, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the Family Research Council and, for all I know, the Slavic Backgammon Players of America came together to remind executives that they were way out of bounds. ABC shelved the show, which will reappear about the same time we see "Mr. Ed: Back in the Saddle Again."

I saw the first two episodes, and they were not for the squeamish. The reality-based series takes place in Austin, Texas, on a cushy cul-de-sac, the kind where housewives are not permitted to step out the front door without a pitcher of iced tea. Seven families are competing for a vacant house with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a game room and a spa.

The judges: the current neighbors, all of whom are white and share traditional Christian values. The competitors: a white gay couple who have adopted a black baby, a large Mexican family with a dominating mother, a white family that labels itself as pagan, a Korean family that runs a sushi restaurant, a white family with a stripper for a mother, a black family that cheerleads about God and a white couple covered in tattoos.

(snip)

The early episodes go to great lengths to show that the cul-de-saccers will eventually become more tolerant. Preview clips have them saying such things as "my perception changed" and "I don't think we'll look at people from a distance and judge them again."

But to protesters, that payoff is too little, too late. GLAAD argued that it is dangerous to let intolerance and bigotry go unchallenged for weeks at a time. The National Fair Housing Alliance said the show was not good for race relations. Of course, that logic suggests that race relations are just peachy right now.


(snip)

Neal Justin is at [e-mail].

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1706/5492666.html

[acmavm]

1. That is just so wrong. Wrong that these people should have go be

on a reality show to get into that neighborhood (why the hell would the want to??).

Wrong that these people who already live in this neighborhood are such attention whores (or money grubbers) that they would participate in this fiasco. Even worse, that they are such patently bigoted specimens that they would qualify for such a program.

Oh forget it. There's just so many things wrong with this idea that I won't live long enough to mention them all.