No more Kardashians!

So there's this huge new grassroots campaign to out the Kardashian "empire" from the E! network. According to some chick in Colorado who has seen three episodes, the show promotes vulgarity, sexual promiscuity, vanity and...other bad things. She says that the girls (let's call the unit KKK) portray an unrealistic image which is a negative image for impressionable young girls and should be taken off the air. She says that the public have the right to better quality programming. I say...really?

If I took this woman at her word, I wouldn't be surprised to find that young children had no choice but to watch Keeping Up With the Kardashians (and all its offspring), smell like Unbreakable (Khloe's perfume), wear their clothes and jewelry, and most importantly, care about these girls. All of these things are demonstrably untrue. Prior to the inclusion of the Kardashian Kollection on HLN, the barrage of K-themed shows was limited to E!, a network that made Hugh Heffner's string of concubines into household names and considers the tragedy of Jon Ben`et Ramsey a Hollywood Story. The only original shows that this network comes up with are unscripted, shallow, and usually uncreative. Even if this lady's charges against the Kardashian Klan are true, I could not imagine a more appropriate home for the family's escapades than E!. In any case, their being limited to one (occasionally two) channels ensures that the lives of these vapid, ignorant little princesses can be blocked out with a click of the remote. It would be harder to take back a remote from a couchmate than to press the button that will get rid of them. As for her protests that the Kardashians appear too often in magazines and now in stores to simply ignore, their frequent appearances on covers is only a reflection of their popularity and their new clothing line is no more an imposition to the masses than Abercrombie and Fitch is (though their ads make it difficult to remember that they're selling clothes). The truth is, KKK are only as important as we make them and this outcry for censorship sounds too much like a cry for help.

We had a client come into the Writing Center today who took up the majority of a blank page airing her grievances against the center, the staff, and our policies. So vehement were her complaints that anyone reading them would have thought that this was the last straw and we would never see her again. Alas, that person would be wrong. We know that she will come again because she already decided that she could not find any value in the writing center. A few days back, she went so far as to have herself deleted from the system, so final was her resolve to never again utilize the resources the center made available to her. I wondered when I heard this why it was so important for her to be deleted from the system. Our one newsletter had already been sent out, nor do we send out mass emails except to say when we'll be closed on special occasions. The only way her inclusion into the writing center's system would have affected her would be if she chose to make an appointment, which she did, only days later. The fact is, there was something about this place that drew her to come, the same way that there is something about the Kardashians that draws people to watch.

I am not ashamed to say that I have seen every Kardashian show, from the original one about the whole family to the spin-offs about taking various cities. I have picked a favorite, rooted against less favorites, and passed judgement on each of the family members at one time or another. I have done the same with the Kardashian family that I have with the cast of the Big Bang Theory and in both cases, it was my choice. I decided to watch these shows the same way that our patron decided to come back to the Center and these moms decided to have this station on. We have all been guilty of allowing the media to impact us at some time, but there does come a point when personal responsibility trumps all else. For some people, nothing wraps up a lazy Sunday like watching a group of relatively useless people worry about miniscule problems in their overprivileged lives. As unsettling as it is for you, it gives many reason to smile. You shouldn't try to take that away from us.