2. Describe a person in your life of any gender and sexual orientation, as long as it's a gay male. Make sure to edit your comments to make your subject appear as pissy, hissy, fussy, needy, emasculated, infantilized, underhanded, self-obsessed, effeminate, self-marginalizing, immature, sex-obsessed, petty, vindictive, stereotypical and whiny as possible. (Hint: It helps if you start with someone who generally exhibits these traits and edit from there. Extra points if they're mean to Brian about his height, because that super-bad bugs me.) Who the fuck do you think benefits from denigrating gay men as unstable and only approximating "real" masculinity? Who the fuck do you think requires such constant approval and support of their own masculinity that they can't help but strike out at anything that threatens it? (See #1 for some extra material.) Why do you think that is?

3. First, outline the history and support of the well-known "female alliances don't ever work" theory of reality TV. Then, discuss the marketing/storytelling reasoning behind the constant editing and manipulation of entertainment to explain how this ongoing impression titillates male viewers while underscoring female viewers' own misogynist tendencies. Where the fuck does this start? Why is the "women are bitches to each other when nobody's around" concept so fucking glamorized? Who is the nobody in that last sentence whose quantum gaze is essential to the entire scenario? Why is the portrayal of men so easily relegated to "Boy's Club" with a few (gay or otherwise "maladjusted") scapegoats, while the portrayal of women in popular culture is that they stand, bitchily, alone? What do you think they're really "fighting" over? Who the hell do you think benefits from that concept?

4. Tell me why America would prefer to watch this crap than something where people of quality, minority or majority, honestly compete against each other for something worthwhile. I really, really need to know. Because my intimation is that your answers to #1 - #3, inclusive, mean that this is a question that has no answer, because it's not "America" that wants it, it's the people in charge of the information.

(This quiz not brought to you by a vast left-wing conspiracy -- I'm way more of a Republican than you are -- but more by a sense of horror. I'm Jacob Clifton, and I approve this message.)