Opinionist: Reach for the Stars

On Sundays, Houstonist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in Houston. The opinions expressed below are entirely those of the author.

Ready for your big break? Willing to do anything to get some money, honey? Well, put on your knee pads and big, watery eyes and head over to the Marriott (near the Galleria, natch) between 9am and 6pm today. You'll get sixty seconds to share your big idea, sob story, cure for [insert disease] or deep-seated need for breast implants with five "multi-millionaires,” all brought to you courtesy of the folks at NBC.

Here’s the deal. Fortune, as the show will be called, is based on a television program that just started airing in the UK. Those Brits really seem to have a lock on the whole reality TV thing. Participants have 60 seconds to present their case and make the ask. The rich folk, who are supplying all the prize money in a genius financial move by NBC, then ask the contestants probing questions. If the majority of the moneyed support the idea, that contestant gets the cash.

What kind of scale can these people use to decide who gets funded? Do you choose the kid who is desperate for a prosthetic abdomen or the divorcee who was kidnapped while on vacation and needs ransom so she can make it home in time to see her 90-year-old grandmother be the first person in the family to graduate from college or the scientist who’s half-a-million dollars away from a cure for social anxiety?

And what about the people who have real needs? Won’t it be interesting to see who ranks higher – orphans or cancer patients? Maybe they can make them fight to the death. Perhaps that will be the next program – instead of Fortune, it’ll be called Fate.

It’s one thing to put a bunch of skanks in a big house with a guy pretending to be a prince and watch mayhem and STDs unfold, but it’s quite another to look at a group of people with real needs or great ideas and watch some random multi-millionaires pick and choose who gets a break. Sure, it's a great day for the people who get the money, but I'll bet it's a quiet bus ride home for those who don't. And those who don't will be the majority.

The constant spectacle of people publicly humiliating themselves for money is getting pretty tired. It's like dignity has become a foreign concept. And when you have the actual money-holders doling out the cash rather than a contest judged by the likes of Danny Bonaduce or Star Jones, the whole thing takes on a creepy supplicant-coming-to-the-king kind of air.

But, hey, it doesn't matter that you had to crawl across broken glass wearing a diaper full of someone else's poo on national television. Nah, man, not as long as you got paid.

Well, I’ve gotta run. I need to find my head shot and tweak my sixty second presentation for a dog farm on the northern California coast. Maybe I’ll ask for some big ol' breast implants, too.

Photo: flickr user carf.

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