Unreality TV

Here's one more sign–and perhaps the last we need–that the terrorists didn't win: Wednesday's televised slug fest between disgraced skating queen/deadbeat tenant Tonya Harding and Clinton scandal empress/pinup gal Paula Jones. One can only imagine that this is precisely the sort of spectacle that raised the ire of Al Qaeda's fundamentalist leaders.

Like the "celebrity" versions of some current game shows, Fox's Celebrity Boxing (which also includes bouts featuring family sitcom icons Danny Bonaduce, Barry Williams, and Todd Bridges, along with washed-up rapper Vanilla Ice) takes the reality TV trend and simultaneously expands and explodes it by putting celebrities in positions that can charitably be called humiliating.

Unlike past minor-celebrity vehicles such as Battle of the Network Stars–in which Lou "The Incredible Hulk" Ferrigno might square off against Robert "Baa Baa Black Sheep" Conrad in a hotly contested 100-yard sprint or Charlene "Dallas" Tilton might take a dive in a hard-fought dunking booth competition (don't ask)–the new shows do not attempt to aggrandize their participants.

Rather, these shows are more like Jerry Springer, where the audience's pleasure comes from witnessing private shame made public. In using celebrities for this purpose, Celebrity Boxing and other shows like it may be the ultimate example of what economist Tyler Cowen has suggested is the logic of celebrity in a liberal market order. In ages past, argues Cowen in in his 2000 book What Price Fame?, heroes were usually military and political leaders who led by force and forced citizens to sacrifice their property and lives for the rulers' ambitions. Nowadays, things are blissfully different: "Contemporary stars are well-paid but impotent puppets….These market-based heroes are truly meritorious in one essential way: The serve their fans rather than making their fans serve them."