Hold The Spice

In this AFP File Photo, Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham shows us how well Astroglide works as a lip gloss.

Apparently, not everyone in America gives a shit about the Beckhams. For those of you not "in the know" (meaning you must live in a sensory deprivation tank these days--I'm thinking of buying one for this purpose, actually), the Beckhams are deified British soccer star David Beckham, who's coming to play for Los Angeles Galaxy, and his clotheshorse brood mare wife, Victoria, formerly known as "Posh Spice" of the Spice Girls.

The impeccable credentials dazzle. Room spinning. Must find chair.

I don't give much credence to the New York Post, but I do love that their review of a planned reality mini-series on her daily life calls her behavior "vapid and condescending" and states that their mansion decor is "nightmarishly overdone." The behavior part is debatable (the New York Times says that she's "pleasant" enough, although I don't know what the benchmark of "pleasant" is these days). And I couldn't care less how they want to decorate their house. It's their house--if they want to paint it in wildebeast feces, that's up to them.

But the fact that these tacky super-celebs are constantly being crammed down our throats is beginning to gall me. Even more galling is that their behavior is depicted as normal--in showing these people go through the routines of their days, the producers of these shows make them our protagonists, and us their unwitting henchmen. I don't watch the shows, but who can fucking escape them? Even at work, in an open-air cubicle farm, we're forced to listen to this shit eight hours a day. And, in general, I really resent having to feel embarrassment on their behalf when they're rude to a shop assistant, a secretary, or someone else who doesn't deserve their shit and doesn't have a weapon handy (as I most assuredly would in dealing with these human scabies).

But since television is too cheap to hire writers (except those working on "24," "Desperate Housewives" and the "CSI" quintology), I suppose this is all we'll ever get. It is heartening, however, that this show, which was intended to be a mini-series, was cut to a one-hour special.

Perhaps a seed of brain is germinating in the collective skull of broadcast television. Let's water it well.