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Andy Warhol coined the phrase that everyone has their 15 minutes of fame. I guess this is Shilpa Shetty's 15 minutes. at the gym, to my shock, this was all over the news network. it was the headlines in gulf news. front half. and then when we came home and we started watching NDTV and barkha dutta's "reality bites" came on. it was the topic of discussion. racism or reality tv? i think barkha dutta is awesome and i saw lakshya mainly coz it was loosely based on her. neway back to the story, there was one guy on the show who i really cant remember the name but ive seen him on tv before. lets just call him snobby judge. although i do think he was the most sensible one. apache indian was one of the judges too. anyway they hit home the point. that there is racism everywhere and it definetly is a serious matter. but what about the bigger areas for example racism in housing, in immigration matters, in airports, in professional life. basically in other areas of life, other than some "3rd rate actors 3rd rate tv show". to a certain degree i agree with some statements of the judge. but when he said i have never watched celebrity big brother nor will i ever. i was a bit disappointed. how can u pass judgement on what you havent seen. uve just heard things and have made ure judgement. i have seen the desi version of big boss and i think its boring and all the actors suck. i dont think its awesome tv. and honestly like another judge pointed out (name forgotten, again) reality tv is contrived. i think it is too. or maybe im cynical. i think the editing is done in order to make the contestants seem more cattier than normal. i think this whole racism thing was done in order to increase their televison ratings. which they did achieve. but i dont think they expected it to be blown this out of proportion.

wat bugged me a whole lot more was these random pple from bihar, burning effigies of the other contestants. doesnt racism occur in india? do they remove morchas against it whenever it happens. how about the fact that some pple still believe in the caste system. all religions do. its become a cultural thing. isnt that racism. fair and lovely is probably the fastest selling product in india. it promotes the fairer your skin the better you look. isnt that a form of racism.

racism as we all agree is wrong. and im not saying that what they called shetty was good. it was wrong. but talking about or scolding someone or shutting down the program is not going to change things. i dont know if there is any "cure" for this. you cant change the way people think. its not like by telling someone not to be racist they will not be. the only thing you can do is prevent the future from turning out the same.

anyway, there are no losers here not shilpa shetty, not channel 4, nor the big brother producers. she will make lots of money during and after the show and may even win. channel 4 and big boss got what they want. more ratings. whether they hate it or whether its curiosity pple are watching the show. and betting 10:1 no matter how much the snobby judge denies he will see at least one episode for curiosity sake.