Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Never Thought I'd Say This But....

...I'm going to recommend a Reality TV Show. Wow, this is really a first. However, ABC's reality show "Wife Swap" has a local environmentalist/unschooler/and just plain cool person on this week. She was Asa's violin teacher for years and if any environmentalist could walk into an overconsuming American's home (let alone one who thinks junk food is "more nutritious" and has 5 cars, all of them SUVs and big trucks) and handle it with grace and aplomb, it's Melanie. We watched it tonight and my kids were really jazzed to see the show and were cheering her on (as she installs a bidet and forbids them to use toilet paper and asks them to sell an SUV, LOL) and we were all happy that the producers seemed to play it pretty even-handedly and let the people speak for themselves. The other mom was, well, just not very nice. At all. And not very happy. And prefers her dogs to interacting with other people, including her husband and son. So their situations really did speak for themselves.

I thought Melanie and her partner Rob and son Skye did an excellent job of repeatedly bringing up the reasons for their lifestyle choices in a mostly respectful manner. On many stations it airs on Wednesday night, so heads up if you want to catch a little bit of environmentalism invading ABC's prime time!

1 comment:

Madeline Rains said...

oh I wish I'd read this earlier! I have an unschooling friend here who was almost set to be on this show but her husband decided he didn't want to do it. She and her husband are actors and she felt it would help their career as well as help the unschooling message to be put out there respectfully. Would have loved to see this! Sounds like she did great.