In Which You Can't Do What Exactly On Television

That's Just The Jets Baby

by MOLLY LAMBERT

"Like a melted Barbie" is how one ONTD commenter described the face of murdered "Playboy representative" Jasmine Fiore. An insult with the sting of truth, what would have been merely snarky days before, becomes horrific having learned that Ms. Fiore was killed and her body stuffed inside a suitcase.

Jenkins douchebagging it up on VH1's "Megan Wants A Millionaire"

Ryan Alexander Jenkins, 32, was a contestant in three episodes of the VH1 reality show "Megan Wants a Millionaire," about a woman trying to land a wealthy bachelor. Fiore's familyhad heard that Jenkins was an investment banker, but police described his occupation as a former reality show contestant.

black hole sun, won't you come, and wash away the rain

The body of Jasmine Fiore, 28, was found about 7 a.m. Saturday in a dumpster at an apartment complex. She had been strangled, police said, and was nude when found, stuffed inside a suitcase. The body was found by a man rifling through the trash for recyclable bottles and cans.

Jenkins thinking Patrick Batemanish things about golddigger Megan

Fiore met Jenkins at a Hawaiian Tropic event in Las Vegas on St. Patrick's Day and fell in love, but later she said she had broken up with him and returned to an ex-boyfriend. Fiore was part of a love triangle between the two for several months.

Jasmine Fiore at The Lingerie Bowl in '08

Fiore and Jenkins had left Los Angeles together Thursday and were bound for a poker tournament in San Diego according to her mother, who had been staying with her. Fiore left with her suitcase "packed to the gills...probably the same one she was stuffed in," says her mother.

actual graph on wikipedia as of me writing this blog, note the purple

Things like this happen all the time in Los Angeles and everywhere else in the world. It is not glamorous. There is a certain particular sadness to the fame-seeking aspect of the case, in order to remind us that Jasmine Fiore is the same species of hot blooming Hollywood flower as The Black Dahlia.

Meanwhile a much discussed sex tape reveals precious little sex but tells us everything about the sad lives of D-List actors Eric Dane and Rebecca Gayheart. Cocaine and threesomes with former teen beauty queen turned Hollywood madam Kari Ann Penicheare staged like a digicam porn version of "My Dinner With Andre."

A credit card number is recited and bleeped out. Everyone appears far too strung out to fuck. It is a sad scene, smoking cigarettes in the jacuzzi, particularly when you remember that Rebecca Gayheart committed vehicular homicide on a child while talking on her cell phone (probably also coked off her face).

If we record everything, will it help us understand anything about human nature? That a reality show contestant posing as a millionaire would secretly be a murderous scumbag is not shocking. It's surprising that this hadn't happened yet. Reality TV by its nature will attract narcissists from the fringes of society, mostly nuts.

Budd Dwyer was the first person to kill himself onscreen in front of a live TV audience, in front of five news cameras in 1987. He pulled a shotgun in his mouth after handing out envelopes containing various suicide notes he had prepared.

John F. Kennedy died in front of cameras. If we can do it in real life, why can't we show it onscreen? In the future people will demand that their deaths be broadcast.

I've been obsessed for years now with the syndicated show "Cheaters," which purports to show cheating lovers and spouses getting caught in the act. Sleazy host Joey Greco takes the wronged partner along a path of revenge and redemption, leading them to confront the cheater. Sometimes the third party in the love triangle starts a fight, or storms off. Once Joey Greco got stabbed in the stomach.

the line between reality and Tim & Eric is so thin sometimes

"Cheaters" is staged. Or it isn't. Does it make us less morally culpable to watch a staged show that preys on human desires for fairness and accountability in life, things we rarely actually get? Does it matter that the show is so obviously staged, clearly violating lots of laws and always getting a clear shot of the "cheating" couple fucking in front of a hidden camera? What kind of art is this exactly?

morally bankrupt and incredibly Twilight Zone

The last time I remember being genuinely freaked out by reality television was The Swan, the 2004 Fox show where "ugly people" are given "plastic surgery makeovers." If you told me that show was staged (by David Lynch or Cronenberg) I would be relieved, but it was horribly real. That nothing went wrong during any of the surgeries barely seems possible.

China's "Green Dam" censorware program for children on the internet

Is there a line? Where do we draw it? Even if we sanitize TV, there's always the internet, and the internet always shows everything.

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording. She tumbls here. She twitters here.

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