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What are you watching on TV?
As we all know by now, Fox television is the home of traditional
family values, unimpeachable morality and conservative politics. We
know that because we've been told often enough by Fox's on-camera
personalities, including accused sexual harasser Bill O'Reilly. And
Fox's viewers -- many of whom are moral-values Bush voters --
obviously agree.

So perhaps there is something emotionally uplifting and morally
invigorating about the new unscripted Fox show, "Who's Your Daddy?",
scheduled to debut on Jan. 3. But for the life of me, I can't figure
out what it could be.

The premiere episode pits a woman who was adopted as an infant
against eight men, each of whom tries to persuade her that he is the
biological father she has never met. If she correctly picks her
biological father from among the imposters, she wins $100,000. If
she guesses incorrectly, the man who was able to deceive her gets
the $100,000. It's a new low in the exploitation of sensitive and
emotionally charged private matters for prurient viewing.

But then Fox pioneered the fine art of matching the basest human
emotions (greed, thirst for celebrity, the insatiable desire to view
public humiliation) with the most super-charged of human desires
(the longing for romance, the desire for beauty, the need for
familial acceptance) in so-called reality shows. Fox, after all,
gave American culture the appalling "Who Wants to Marry a
Multimillionaire?," a miasma of greed and deception that made a
mockery of marriage.

Fox has also been socked with a record-setting federal government
fine -- $1.2 million -- for violating decency standards on a show
called "Married by America." Last season, Fox introduced an
unscripted show about wife-swapping.

Those shows, like so many others of their ilk, were lapped up by the
red-state voters who claim to despise such cultural degradation.
Indeed, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. -- which owns both Fox News and
Fox Broadcasting Co. -- has created a stable of morally repugnant
programming because viewers flock to it. (Murdoch, an
ultraconservative who contributes heavily to GOP causes, worships
money above all else.)

An enduring paradox of our times is that the very people who enjoy
watching trashy television heap so much opprobrium on the machinery
that produces it....