Even reality can’t be this demoralizing

I have this great idea for a new reality show. I’m going to invite a cable channel to follow around the 12 appellate clinic students as they correspond with clients, look up cases on Westlaw, and format their briefs. There will be fiery arguments between teams fighting for scarce resources: “Your case has nothing to it. It’s just a sentencing issue. We have to reargue a motion to suppress. That’s constitutional.” And squabbles between partners: “I told you not to cite that case! It’s been abrogated. Ah…bro…gae…ted. Idiot!” You can just imagine a weepy twentysomething sobbing into the camera, “I told him that it has to be 14-point Times New Roman, but he printed and bound all the copies and it’s 12-point Calibri. Twelve point!”

The thing about reality is that it’s mostly tedious. That’s why in movies all the hard work gets rolled up into a montage with a catchy song playing in the background. We don’t have to watch Rocky train in real time for the big fight. Can you imagine how dull that would be? We don’t have to listen as Vinny painstakingly interviews all the witnesses he cross-examines about the murder at the Sack of Suds. Not only would that be mind-numbing, but it would make the cross itself anticlimactic. But, boring as it would be to watch, the montage is the heart of the story; it’s where greatness lives.

It follows that a reality show depicting anyone doing anything remotely worthwhile (other than talent contests, I suppose) would be as much fun as people-watching at the library. So, instead of following 12 law students briefing cases for indigent defendants, television offers up the animalistic self-indulgences of a pack of semi-literates. I don’t know how much more public approbation—even celebration—of an ignorant and dogged refusal to aspire to anything beyond self-gratification the Republic can survive.