Reality TV stars we love to hate

“RICH Kids of Beverly Hills” photo: EONLINE.COM

This TV season, a number of new shows have been produced to appeal to viewers’ bitchy and snitty impulses by giving them many opportunities to look down on and bash the idiosyncratic people they cynically choose to showcase.

Ironically, most of those people are very wealthy and live the much-desired life of the rich and famous. But they turn out to be such self-centered, shallow and lousy human beings that viewers regard them as inferior to them, definitely undeserving of the many cushy perks they enjoy.

The most viewer-friendly show in this regard is “Rich Kids of Beverly Hills,” which focuses on a group of lazy, spendthrift and self-absorbed louts who live off their rich parents’ guilty largesse—and “bottomless” credit cards.

Just the other week, the show’s resident rich bitches and leeches went on a top-of-the-line tour of China, checking into the biggest and most lavish hotel suites, shopping in signature stores and dining at really fabulous restaurants.

The luxury and culture surrounding them were lost on them because they were more interested in their own little intramurals, petty squabbles, snide resentments, etc.

Why did they have to go abroad in the first place, if all they intended to do was to bitch and grouse, activities that they could very well have done, at no additional cost to their “spoiler” parents, in their own toilets? Beats us.

In any case, the indolent scions and princesses are being featured precisely to tick viewers off in a big way so ordinary and unprivileged folks like you and me can feel blithely superior to them and not hate it so much that we are relatively deprived, and they aren’t! That’s supposed to provide some sort of psychic consolation (does it?) so the show is popular with the TV medium’s madding throngs of envious have-nots.

Smug superiority

Another TV show that strums on similar harp strings of smug superiority is the “Real Housewives” series of “reality” productions—which constitute a “traveling feast” because it’s taped in different wealthy enclaves in the United States.

The focus this time is on generally over-aged beauties who have “married smartly and well” so they’re now living in the veritable lap and even the groin of luxury! They decorate themselves with the biggest and most expensive jewelry and patronize the priciest salons and spas.

With all the money they have to throw around, you’d think they would use some of it to improve not just their looks but also their minds, sensibilities and appreciation of the truly finer things in life—and you’d be dead-wrong!

No, these ladies don’t have the inclination or the mental and cultural capacity to look beyond the most superficial aspects of their existence—namely, themselves. And like their “Rich Kids” counterparts, they love getting into messy catfights that give their shows the required dose of visual and verbal volume that viewers just love to diss, hiss at and dismiss as proofs of their less-than-human existence.

And the fact that most of the combative and vituperative ladies are on the wrong side of 50 adds to the pathetic nature of their delusional lives and fantasies!