Why is it that this guy gets hung by his toes. But when Alec Baldwin calls someone a "fucking cocksucking faggot" and a long list of other unrelated homophobic slurs, no one bats an eye.

All reality TV shows have been doctored to make for more interesting TV since its inception with The Real World, the so-called point of this whole video is mute. Anyone with half a brain cell knows this video isn't about Duck Dynasty being fake, or about the discrimination of opressed people.

Alec Baldwin is making millions doing far worse on a monthly basis. Remember when he called his 12 year old daughter and verbal and mentally abused her? Or when he called a reporter a fat queen. Or another incident where he threathens to shove his foot up someone's faggot ass. No one tries to ruin his career over any of the horrible disgusting things Alec has said or done, but this bearded redneck happens to quote bible scriptures. That's what all this fabricated hate is really all about.

Most of the 'outraged' people don't give a shit about gay people, they just want to see the religious wingnuts get taken down a peg so they can wave their fedora emblazoned atheism flag. They won't come right out and say it because it would make them selfish assholes riding the coat-tails of people who are actually being abused and discriminated against. No I'm not religious, but I can smell bullshit a mile away, and this whole thing reeks. Were's this assholes outrage when it comes to Alec? Ohh He dosen't really give a shit about gay rights, not a peep when he can't pin a christian to the wall; he just cares about religious people doing stupid things.

Don't subjegate the real issue with your atheism agenda, it makes you look disgusting and reprehensible. That attitude is exactly why no one takes our ideology seriously; You think your doing some greater good, but your means are selfish to the very core.

Very cool, though didn't care for it being delivered in the reality-TV context. Awesome to see and hear modern defibrillator equipment too.

I'm curious: Would this video have earned a ban if he'd not made it (due to the snuff agreement)?

Fake. It would be easy to tell that there wasn't really a crowd out there even before the curtain raised..

Reality TV is anything but...

This may run long, so bear with me.

Law Enforcement employees tend to come from two specific groups of people. The first group is going to consist of people who actually joined up to try to protect people and make things safer for them. They are idealists who may grow jaded over time; because realistically if your only input on what being a LEO is the internet and reality TV, you are not prepared for the type of mental assault you will endure day in and day out. I'm not talking about angry people, but stuff like drawing circles around little chunks of brains on the highway from a teenage girl that went through a windshield.

As an officer at any level (except maybe a small town), you are going to see the absolute worst side of humanity on a daily basis and you aren't on a tour of duty like the military. You don't get to 'rotate' home and put it behind you. This will wear on anybody who is not a sociopath, it will grind you down to a nub. You could see professional help for this, but I will go into that later.

The second type of person who goes into law enforcement is someone who likes authority, a sense of power over someone else, a bully. This person is in the job because it gives them power over others and the law will protect them because it is vaguely worded in SO many cases. This person will shrug off the effects that cripple the first type over time, because they feel in charge of every situation. After a while, if they don't tone it down, they will get caught. Thankfully the cell camera and the internet tends to be helping clean them out due to their own incapability to see they can't ALWAYS be in charge, but it will be a long road because this group is the BULK of the ones that join LE organizations.

Now why do these two groups tend to be the ones that you are going to run into on a consistent basis? The simple, hard answer is that we pay our front line LEO's very little compared to other services that risk their life or experience the mental grind. Your average patrol officer is going to pull a median salary of about 35k with comparable benefits to someone working in a office job. A firefighter is going to pull around 45k and scales up much quicker, not to mention their benefits are beyond good. EMT's make about the same as patrol officers, but their benefits are also very good and they don't have the same stressors. I know that ranges will vary and State LEO's are very well paid on average, but we are talking about the people you are going to encounter most often.

If you have to choose between a job where you are going to be considered a 'hero' or a job where everyone is going to be biased towards you being a 'villain, and the hero jobs pay better, which would you logically choose? Assuming of course that you are not sorted into one of the two groups I described, most are going to run away from serving in LE. In fact, this is why more of the 'bullies' tend towards LE and the 'idealists' don't. So you already have created a situation where the 'stormtrooper' mindset is going to prefer this job and haven't considered options to rectify it. The people you don't run into that much are going to be the people that took college and got pushed through the ranks quickly. If you didn't take college or just took an Associates Degree, you have to beat these people out. It is extremely hard to do that, even if you do your job much better than they did.

The final factor that runs into this is the mental issues I mentioned earlier. If you seek help from your employers for mental stress, they are going to handle it differently if you are a LEO. You are going to find out quickly that you are expendable. If you seek help and get classified as PTSD, you set a chain of events in motion that is inexorable. You will be rotated to a desk. You will see a Psychiatrist who will prescribe anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medication. This person will meet with you for around 15 minutes 3-4 times a week, ask you questions, and ask if the medication is helping. If you return to functional status in a month or two, you get put back on duty. If you don't, they put you on short term disability for up to one year. Your visits drop to once a week, then once a month. One year later, your employment is terminated. They hire a new recruit and start the cycle again about the same time that you start your short term disability. You get to try to salvage your career in anyway possible, hopefully you paid through the nose for long term disability, or you can try to find a smaller department that doesn't bother to dig too deep on background checks.

Other related fields like firefighters/emts comprehend PTSD and work with their people much harder. They have better benefits so you they can see outside therapists as much as needed. There is less stigma if you have a problem, because they understand. You go on the fritz as an LEO and you will overhear people who used to respect you call you weak or a pussy. Sadly this type of thing happens at all levels of LE, even as a State Trooper you are expendable.

In any case, the point to this essay is that the system is flawed and is going to drive out the good LEOs and save the bad ones to protect itself from litigation. Protect yourself at all times with video, be advised of the laws and loopholes in them that bad LEos will exploit, and don't force confrontation with a LEO if there is a loophole. If the man had stepped outside and talked calmly, the incident would not have escalated as it did. In this case he did not inform himself of the loopholes correctly and got tasered (which was improper, they didn't warn him correctly or anything), and the LEOs look like villains again.

I install satellite television systems for a living (quitting soon). I don't own a TV. Frequently, my customers will ask me which programming provider I use. I inform them I don't own a TV, haven't for 7 years. INVARIABLY, their response involves something along the lines of "I mostly just watch the news." AS IF THAT IS SOME KIND OF VIRTUE. It's like watching some kind of reality TV show on steroids, where they are constantly streaming made up BS professionally restructured to appear indistinguishable from real facts. But the worst part is: no matter what they are reporting on, or how they spin it, it forces the entire nation to think the same thing at the same time. And no one sees the problem with this...

Kill your TV!

I'll agree that the behavior displayed by the Fox anchors was pretty bad.
But if we're being honest about it, reality TV exists primarily to showcase people who are either pretty to look at and or people making idiots of themselves for our entertainment. Check and check, yep, he's a reality show star. I'm not sure I'm willing to put him in the same room as De Niro until he's been nominated for or won several Academy awards, we're all human, certainly but beyond that I'm not sure I see a connection to a famous actor.

Well, this is not a reality tv but a game show, so...?

Is this a new kind of TV-Show called "We might destroy your family, but you get money, so it's ok."? I always thought "Reality" TV was the greatest Bullshit I've ever seen.
Way to go Television, next stop would be something like the "Running Man". I'd rather watch a marathon of 80's and early 90's action movies... in fact I'm going to do that right now. Fuck You Television!

Doug Stanhope ~ Reality TV Needs Assholes has been added as a related post - related requested by kulpims on that post.

OK, this clip was quite interesting once I actually got around to watching it. I skipped it several times because although I like Penn Jillette, I hate reality TV and have less than zero interest in "Celebrity Apprentice" or whatever else.

So, I was tempted to just reply with a snarky "it certainly does suck" (referring to Celebrity Apprentice / Reality TV in general) without even watching the clip. Glad I didn't do that, so here's a sheepish upvote to compensate for my near faux pas.

Choggs... I think you may have missed the real, though unintended, message in this bit of "journalism". Us southern hicks are just generally nicer than everyone else, arn't we?

I'm glad you didn't put this in * news, as ABC clearly wants it to be considered. Perhaps *wtf would be appropriate though, because that was my reaction to this ridiculous "reality" tv segment.

This is exactly the kind of shit production we should downvote as a society, not just here at Videosift. This pathetic attempt at "reality" tv cum journalism is the worst and most pathetic kind of social manipulation.

Don't mistake my hatred of this crap production for hatred of any of the players or played. Mostly I feel pity for the lot of them. Yeah, self-righteous and above-it-all-better-than-everyone-else kind of pity. Why? Because this is pure and simple a slice of shit on a shingle served up fresh and hot for any takers.

Your video, Doug Stanhope ~ Reality TV Needs Assholes, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Doug Stanhope, Reality TV Needs Assholes, Charlier Brooker s Weekly Wipe, BBC' to 'Doug Stanhope, Reality TV Needs Assholes, Charlier Brooker, Weekly Wipe, BBC' - edited by xxovercastxx

To be clear, in the original video the cop's lines from: "Pardon me" up to "sign here" are fabricated. Replacing the original soundtrack and dialogue of the lady relaying her address to the cop as he copies it down and spins the clipboard around for her to sign.

I'm an experienced sound editor. If there's one thing I understand in this world, it's audio and how to hide an edit. At its core this video fails to do that on several levels and all I hope to accomplish here is to educate people who want to learn how to spot a fake in the future.

I am 100% certain this is a fake, rendering it zero true value to the sift.

Don't you find it at all suspicious that in the original video the lady is audible whenever she speaks except for when she supposedly asks the cop the implied question? Why wouldn't she be heard then? It's because when he asks for her present address (actual dialogue) her actual dialogue (stating her address while he writes it down) is removed and the cop's zinger is shoe-horned in.

Notice the awkwardness in the jump in time between the the end of the zinger "sign here" and "This is not an admission of guilt"(actual dialogue). The difference in the fidelity of the audio (the fake dub vs the actual dialogue) is apparent. Besides that, it's just an unnatural rhythm of speaking forgetting that the dubbed voice is way off in terms of a match for the cop when listened to back to back at such a close proximity. The dubbers didn't have a large window of time to work within giving the dialogue a rushed quality which helps to expose it as a fake.

Also note the cop's body language while he is speaking to her throughout the original video. He frequently looks at her making eye contact when addressing her. During the false exchange his body language in no way reflects the bewilderment that is expressed when he repeats her assumed hushed dialogue.

On top of all that the dubbers failed to add foley of the sound of him handling his clipboard, a sound close enough to the cop to be picked up or cause interference with the cop's mic. There is just silence instead since they removed all sound during the exchange added a background ambiance loop (plenty of b-roll to draw from) and then dubbed in the lines which has fooled 110 (as of this post) into voting it into the #1 spot.

These are the exact kinds of tricks that are used in "reality" tv to take raw footage of people and construct characters in post utilizing the most sensational dialogue available and place a musical backing track to let you know how you are supposed to be feeling about a certain person or situation.

TL:DR See funny thing, upvote and move on.

US Reality TV - Just Getting Better has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals on that post.