Okay, people, clearly we need to have a talk.
Now, I’ll admit to having watched the occasional housewife cat-fight, and I’d be lying if I said watching Colton be carted off SURVIVOR on a gurney didn’t fill me with a certain sense of schadenfreude. (I don’t feel good about it, but, come on! That dude was annoying!) There is, however, a line I’d like to think I wouldn’t cross when it comes to my relationship with reality television.
And that line involves paying $18 bucks an hour to chat on the phone with REAL HOUSEWIVES OF NEW JERSEY “star” Danielle Staub. Or $12 a minute to find out what Nadya “Octomom” Suleman thinks of, say, the Republican frontrunners.
Yet some of you out there are doing exactly that according to TMZ, which reported on a site called dial-a-star.com where you can… well, the name is pretty self-explanatory.
There’s a certain bizarre appeal to perusing the site and seeing how much various celebrities are deemed to be worth per minute. For example, GIGOLOS stars Brace and Steven fetch $20 per minute each, and one can’t help but think that for that price, one could experience their particular, er, charms in person. Michael Lohan only fetches $10 a minute, while ex-wife Dina fancies herself worth a cool $25 per minute.
Many of the people listed on the site wouldn’t even make it onto the D-list, and a few — even after a quick Google-search — remain complete unknowns to me.Donald Farmer, anyone?
Perhaps saddest of those currently listed is actor Jeremy London, who for a hot minute a few decades ago seemed destined for better things.
I suppose that these folks are just like anybody else and have to do what they can to make ends meet, even if that means slummin’ for a buck. But maybe we’d be doing a lot of these people a favor if we simply collectively looked away and, rather than pay our hard-earned money for the “privilege” of chatting, forced them to examine their lives and seek other revenue streams.
If, however, you feel compelled to give one of these folks a ring, dial up Michael Lohan and suggest he use the proceeds from your chat to get a better headshot… and perhaps a little dignity. 
Richard M. Simms is the author of Crimes Against Civility and watches more reality television than he is comfortable admitting.