Friday Buzzkills: The week karma went on Spring Break

In keeping with Magical Zombie Day, this week was all about minor miracles and resurrection: Daring high-seas rescues, stirring testimony to the idea that dreams come true, and as if that weren’t enough, hey look: puppies! All in all, it was a pretty good week to start believing in your fellow man again—just as long as you ignored all the other purely execrable human behavior by people who, while they probably don’t know any better, should at least know better than to display it while cameras and microphones are around. But thank the lord they don’t, because without we’d have nothing to talk about, you and I. Let’s join hands and come together on a stirring round of Friday Buzzkills.
– Of course, why should anyone bother tempering their public persona in an era when the difference between “fame” and “infamy” is so ill-defined, and that thin line between love and hate has grown wafer-thin? Take the eternal (seriously… fucking eternal) paradox of Nadya Suleman, a woman so disliked that the media has repeatedly refused to report on her by reporting on their refusal to report on her, creating a never-ending spiral of shame that even we’re obviously guilty of. Unfortunately, our icky ethical quandary doesn’t appear to be ending anytime soon, at least if Suleman’s proposed reality show comes to fruition: After being rejected by nearly every U.S. network—even the normally gung-ho The Learning Channel (or more accurately, the Cautionary Example Channel)—Suleman recently announced she was close to signing a deal with the U.K.-based production house Eyeworks to film several “documentaries” following the lives of her children as they come of age in the House That Rubbernecking Built. (So kind of like Michael Apted’s 7 Up series, only replace “7” with… yeah, you get where this is going…) Early reports have suggested that the show might also introduce a “dating” element, as Suleman attempts to find a man with a fetish for negligent women and a complementary yen for attention at whatever cost.
On the plus side, he probably won’t have to worry about supporting Nadya’s 14 little miracles, because Suleman has already made the shrewd decision to once again turn her crotch-lemons into crotch-lemonade by trademarking the name “Octomom.” Previously applied as an insult, as though she were a Marvel Comics villain whose superpower is a devastating lack of conscience (Marvel: Call me!), “Octomom” has lately been embraced by Suleman, who now sees it as just the ticket to help her land licensing deals with “clothing designers and manufacturers of dolls and infant accessories.” Sadly not mentioned: An “Octomom” brand of birth control; an “Octomom” legal precedent that allows for the revoking of medical licenses for any doctor who utters the words, “Well, we could try splitting your uterus… ;” an “Octomom” implant for everyone on the planet so that whenever a story about “Octomom” comes on TV, your brain plays Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” until it’s all over.
– Surprisingly, Suleman is only the second most horrible person to get all the reality TV show famewhoredom she can handle this week: Disgraced NFL star Michael Vick is already making plans to hit the ground with cameras rolling on a show documenting his attempts to “make amends for his past” the second he’s released from federal custody this July. The former Atlanta Falcon who kept himself entertained on the weekends by organizing dogfights reportedly owes millions to creditors, so he could obviously use whatever money people are willing to throw at him to look at the camera tearfully and mutter some variation on “It’s hard being me” week after week, but while producers have already approached him, it’s not yet clear what network wants to be known as the “We Gave Money To The Most Hated Man In Sports Not Named A-Rod” Channel. (And by the way, dozens of blogs have already beaten you to the Animal Planet joke.) And actually, maybe it’s not any of them: Vick’s spokesman Joel Segal came out today to say that such reports were “totally false”—although his lawyers did tell a judge during Vick’s recent bankruptcy hearing that he might partake in a documentary in exchange for $600,000. Oh, well as long as the disproportionate reward for Vick’s fake contrition is being used in service of something classy...
– Compared to sentencing your 14 children to a lifetime of intense scrutiny and exploitation or forcing dogs to tear each other to pieces for your amusement, a little casual racism seems positively cute—particularly when it’s delivered in the gruff, bear-on-codeine roar of Brad Garrett, star of the perennially not-canceled sitcom ’Til Death. (Tagline: “Hey, At Least It’s In Focus.”) Well-known for his dislike of the paparazzi—who, let’s face it, are only following him at this point in hopes that he’ll throw a newsworthy tantrum—Garrett recently scuffled with yet another cameraman, admonishing him to speak “in English” before yelling at him repeatedly to “Wear the turban!” (An incident that, by the way, comes only two years after Garrett said to another cameraman, “I didn’t know they had black people in Malibu. Go back to where you came from.” Oh how easily these things are misconstrued!) Naturally, this disappointed the American-Arab Discrimination Committee, whose director Nawar Shora offered to “reach out to Mr. Garrett and his crew to help educate him about the Arab/Muslim/Sikh communities,” which we’re sure Garrett will happily take advantage of just as soon as his management team forces him to. (Wait… Brad Garrett has a “crew”?) While the pervasiveness of such stereotypes in this supposedly post-racial age is disappointing in and of itself, what’s truly sad here is that “wear the turban!” was the best dig Garrett could come up with, and he’s ostensibly a comedian.