I’m pregnant with our first child and have been excited at all the information that I am learning to prepare for our special one! I recently had this e-mail sent to me from a popular parenting magazine and was so glad that I follow Etiquette Hell!
It’s no wonder more and more people think it’s okay to throw their own baby shower when articles like this show up!
Under the question: Who should throw my baby shower? it reads: “If you’re really into party planning or everyone else in your life is just too busy, go ahead and plan your shower yourself — just ask a friend to send the invites and gather the RSVPs”.
So basically, if I don’t think my friends are going to step up and give me all the stuff that I deserve as a new mom, then it’s okay for me to throw a party and say, “GIMMEE!!” Sheesh!
Thanks for all you do to educate people on etiquette! 0406-16
The sense of entitlement is not diminishing and the media is an accomplice to the growing expectation that one deserves to receive gifts from people by any means necessary. We are slowly becoming a nation of people who habitually have their hand out expecting to be given things that our ancestors worked hard to provide for themselves.
The trend I am noticing in the reality TV genre is the exploitation of minor aged children to make money. The classic example of this was Jon and Kate Goslin who exploited their sextuplets for financial gain with Kate milking it desperately by the time their divorce was final and the series was winding down. Each week viewers watched the marriage of the Goslins disintegrate in front of our eyes with some issue pertaining to the children often as the catalyst for the argument du jour.
I next noticed “Dance Moms”, the reality TV series focused on the competitive dance team of the Abby Lee Miller Dance Academy. Moms morphed into catty, bitchy backstabbing wenches from Ehell defending some right they felt their particular daughter was owed. It is because of you, dear daughter, that I behave like a crazed beast with no hint of dignity. Little girls are shown sobbing at the drama their selfish mothers perpetuate.
But the show that has really earned my ire is “Married to Medicine”. This new series, based in Atlanta, follows the dramas of four doctors’ wives and two female doctors who are as follows:
Toya Bush-Harris – Married to emergency room physician Dr. Eugene Harris Mariah Huq – Married to emergency room physician Dr. Aydin Huq. Mariah is founder/CEO of the Mariah Media Group and a producer of Married to Medicine. This will become relevant later in this post. Quad Lunceford-Webb – Married to psychiatrist Dr. Gregory Webb. It was revealed at the end of the series that both Quadriyyah and her husband were arrested for assault in 2010. Dr. Jacqueline Walters – A board certified OB/GYN who tries to encourage her fellow cast members to not act in a way that brings shame and embarrassment to black professional women. She is wrestling with pigs and will not come out of this smelling particularly rosy. Kari Wells – Married to orthopedic surgeon Dr. Duncan Wells Dr. Simone Whitmore – A board certified OB/GYN
The fourth episode set the tone for the entire series and as each subsequent episode aired, it became painfully clear that the parentage of Mariah Huq’s 8 year old daughter and the drama associated with certain revelations was a significant portion of the series. Dr. Aydin Huq is not the child’s biological father, he did adopt her and raised her as his own. Huq’s daughter is allegedly unaware that her father is not her biological father The sharing of this tidbit of information sets off an unholy war between Bush-Harris and Huq resulting in a screaming, hair pulling, dress ripping, wine glass throwing cat fight during a black tie party at the Wells home in an episode called, “A Black Eye Affair”:
Seventeen minutes into the episode, Mariah is informed by her sister, Lake, that she and their mom were at the salon and “basically I heard that Toya had been in there talking that Aydin’s not Lxxxxx’s dad and that Lxxxxx doesn’t even know.” Viewers would not find out until several episodes later that Toya had not been in the salon but had said this to a private hairdresser who came to her home. Granted, Toya should not have been gossiping to her hairdresser about other people’s children. And I won’t even begin to get into the numerous ways this fight could have been avoided and how etiquette was not a factor in how issues were handled.
An interview with Toya Bush-Harris sheds some light on the relationship between Toya and Mariah Huq. “People introduced me to Mariah and she brought up the idea of the show and I was like, ‘Nah, not interested.’ Really she just kept pursuing me; she joined my workout, had our husbands doing lunch; she was very persistent. I was like, ‘WHY?’ and she said, ‘You would be great!’ Then, when I started looking for school for my sons and it was like $15,000 per kid a year, and I was like “WHAT?! He’s only four!” So I’m like, ‘I’m gonna do this.’” Yes, you read that correctly. Mariah and Toya did not know each other prior to the TV series. Huq told a near total stranger a piece of private family information and then hypes the drama into overdrive when it gets repeated because it creates great ratings and sells lots of advertising.
Mariah Huq admits that she was the one who told Toya this allegedly personal, private piece of family information. In a later episode, Dr. Jackie confronts Huq about her indiscretion in revealing personal information and tells the viewers, ” We tell our business and we wonder why people tell our business. If you don’t want your business told, you don’t tell it.” PREACH IT, DR. JACKIE! A commenter on another blog noted, “Why should she expect everyone to hold her daughter’s issue so high when she didn’t because if she had she would not have told ANYONE!” It is a very good point. Mariah Huq expected others to uphold a standard of discretion she herself was not willing to do. Mariah Huq, there would have been no drama at all if you have kept family business private.
Repeatedly throughout the series, over and over again, we hear Mariah Huq reiterate that Aydin Huq is not the biological father of her eldest child. It gets repeated at the beginning of each episode as a recap of the previous episode and then throughout each episode. We hear the parents lament that their, “…biggest worry is Lxxxxxx finding out that I am not her biological dad….how will she handle that emotionally? That is the most important thing.” If it was so important to guard your daughter from learning the truth, Dr. Huq, why did you exploit this situation to broadcast it to the entire world? One interview I found online claimed this, “Mariah told me everyone knew, before shooting began, that she would talk about anything and everything, but the topic of Lxxxxx was off limits.” No, it wasn’t off limits. The Huqs had no obligation to utter one word about their daughter on camera. If compelled to, they could have removed their audio packs and cease participating in the filming. If children are off limits, there is nothing on this planet that can stop a parent from protecting a child. The producers did not hold a gun to either parent’s head compelling them to sit and film commentary on each episode. But there is a little known piece of information that pretty much negates the Huqs’ claim that they were powerless to prevent their daughter’s situation being exploited. Mariah Huq is not only a PRODUCER of the show, she is its CREATOR who pitched the series idea for 4 1/2 years before Bravo picked it up. Read it. On a BravoTV blog, Mariah implies that, as producer, she has the power to fire Kari Wells and Toya Bush-Harris from future seasons yet she is powerless to keep her daughter’s parentage out of it? It defies credibility.
This series centers entirely too much on using a young child’s parentage as the basis for the drama. A child who has no voice in choosing if she wants to be internet and media fodder for years to come. Lxxx Huq has no opportunity to determine how the world knows her and how much they know of her because her mother’s desire to produce a smash hit TV series trumped Lxxx Huq’s right to privacy. If you google the child’s name, there are already sites which detail her short life history up to now and the ones doing all the talking online about Lxxx Huq? Mariah Huq, her mother. I could not find a single example of Toya Bush-Harris repeating this information online. The Huqs had it within their ability to inform the producers that their children are off limits totally. Financial gain at the expense of a young girl. It’s the lowest I’ve seen reality TV go .
This is a blog post that has been percolating in my mind for months. Years ago I wrote a scathing critique of reality shows which I viewed as an unrealistic extrapolation of real life events and an exploitation of children by their parents. Minor aged children do not have the capacity to judge what is best for them and this becomes a problem when their parents make decisions for them that are not in the children’s best interests. “Jon and Kate Plus Eight”, on the occasions I did watch it, made me cringe as the bratty exploits of the two older twins became the drama upon which an episode was based. The concept of “love covering a multitude of sins”, i.e. being discreet about exposing the foibles of others you allege to love, was antithetical to the fundamental goal of a reality TV show which was to expose as much family drama as possible.
When I began to become more of a public figure 18 years ago and had the opportunity to be seen or heard on TV, radio, print media, etc., my husband and I made the conscious decision to diligently protect the privacy of our then small children. Anyone would be hardpressed to find an instance of our kids’ names being mentioned online or in any media. This protected their personal right to choose how they wanted their life exposed to the world and as adults, they are very private and appreciative that I did not use them as real life etiquette examples nor exposed them in ways they could not control. There are no archives, no TV shows in syndication replaying the stupid things they did as kids and teenagers. Many years ago Walter Cronkite gave an interview during which he and his wife were asked about their children. Apart from their names and addresses, they both refused to answer any questions about their children (who were by then teenagers), saying their children had never volunteered to be his children and to publicize them would violate their privacy. The idea of protecting the privacy of your children is definitely lost on reality show “stars”.
The main purpose of any television show is to sell soap. The success or failure of any show, reality or otherwise, is dependent upon how much advertising revenue can be generated. Reality TV show “actors” typically make anywhere from $20K as a base salary all the way up to $200K PER EPISODE. Years ago I was offered the position of etiquette expert on a then popular make over show. The drama associated with this show was ridiculous and I declined. My husband’s nephew and wife were offered $20K to do one episode of “Wife Swap” (bluegrass gospel and rock families switching moms for a week) and declined. Some things in life are not for sale.
But there are plenty of drama queens and kings out there who will sell their dignity to the highest bidder. Have you sat through a typical life event, scanned the crowd and wondered who would be the most likely to star in a reality TV series? I have. I enjoy estate auctions and I know exactly who, of the regular attendees, would eagerly signup to be a reality star. They are the blow hards, the drama queens who strut around self importantly drawing attention to themselves (often with entitled behavior) while the rest of the normal folk quietly go about the business of life with as minimal amount of drama as possible. They are the ones who enter a room with loud drama, drawing all eyes to themselves. Reality TV is not representative of the real world. The shows are biased towards casting people who are exhibitionists with limited boundaries on appropriate behavior. The producers want “stars” who will deliver the drama and the uglier the behavior, the better. Indiscretion, gossip, backbiting and backstabbing, slander, trash talking, rudeness, retaliation, deceit, hatred, bullying, harassment, and on and on are all put out there for public consumption as if this was how real people behave. And it’s all done for the almighty dollar.
Just watching the trailers for any of the “Real Housewives of ……” series tells me there is nothing real about these alleged “housewives”. A lot of manufactured drama which would make those with an intact sense of decorum, decency and dignity recoil in horror at the suggestion they behave in that manner. I watched National Geographic channel’s series, “Meet The Hutterites” with great anticipation since the Hutterites have historically been a very closed society and I expected NGS’s usual standard of informative, documentary style programming. The entire series earned harsh criticisms because the producers created false story lines and hyped the drama thus turning it into a tawdry reality show that was profoundly embarrassing for the Hutterites of the King Colony. They had sold off their dignity for a large sum of money that was used to buy large equipment for the colony. “Breaking Amish” was another series that drew intense criticism from the Amish and Mennonite communities as being nothing even remotely comparable to reality since none of the “stars” were actually who they claimed to be. Five people who were presented as in the process of leaving the Amish or Mennonites were found to have left the religion years earlier, had arrest records for DUIs/unlawful conduct/spousal abuse. All were portrayed as being unmarried yet social media site Facebook was quick to reveal that nearly all of them had been previously married, some had children, were divorced. It was viewed as a gross distortion of the truth and a hateful maligning of the Amish in order to create drama that would sell advertising.
Reality TV is a debasement of our culture as it glorifies, educates and encourages behavior that is not dignified, decent, restrained, truthful, or kind.
Part two tomorrow will discuss the trend towards exploiting the vulnerable.
In the news recently was a story regarding a Social Security Administration employee whose flatulence has, apparently, made his co-workers beyond mad. Supervisors cited him for creating a hostile work environment! The charges were later withdrawn after the reprimand letter went public on the Internet.
Reading the reprimand letter is quite interesting in that the dates and exact times the employee let loose with some olfactory offensiveness is recorded. In order to reprimand, discipline or fire a US federal employee, there must be a plethora of documented evidence to substantiate the offenses and even then it is nigh on impossible to actually remove them from their position or fire them. This explains the detailed recording of every instance of flatulence this employee inflicted on his co-workers. Someone had to have been pretty peeved to have spent the time documenting the incidents so as to provide a substantive platform for disciplining him.
Of course, all that work was for naught because Administration officials withdrew the reprimand when it went viral. Mr. Rooting and Tooting is now free to can continue to affect the air quality in the workplace unimpeded despite knowing his co-workers and bosses find his flatulence to be quite rude.
This isn’t a personal story but I was appalled by the movie I found scrolling through my channels on a slow night – on ABC Family no less – called My Fake Fiance. The guide description, ‘A man and a woman fake an engagement and wedding to receive presents and money’, didn’t pique my interest in actually watching the movie, but I felt compelled to check Wikipedia to see if it was as bad as that blurb made it sound. Nope. It was worse (full description can be found here).
Apparently the aforementioned man and woman decided to get married as a scheme to pay off his gambling debts and furnish her house and, in the process of conning their nearest and dearest ACTUALLY fall in love and decide to give the fake marriage a real go. There are some awful subplots about kids being denied college to pay for the sham wedding, an uncle who gifts them money that could have been used to pay off the gambling debt in the first place, and more general awfulness.
I guess this was the logical conclusion of all those gift hungry couples featured on this site, but played out as romantic comedy. I’m not sure the person who thought that this would be a good plot for a movie is in any way familiar with the concepts of ‘romance’ or ‘comedy’.