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Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but that's not reality, it's just another aesthetic form of fiction.

There was a time when idealistic folksingers such as myself believed that Reality TV was a programming vogue that would peak and recede, leaving only its hardiest show-offs. Instead, it has metastasized like toxic mold, filling every nook and opening new crannies.

The television industry doesn't like to see the compexity of the world. It prefers simple reporting, with simple ideas: this is white, that's black; this is good, that's bad.

Television is much more of a producer's writer's medium, so a lot of the time, when you're directing a television show, they have a color palette on set or a visual style and dynamic that's already been predetermined, and you just kind of have to follow the rules.

Reality shows serve up juicy drama out of human shortcomings.

Reality TV is anything but.

I don't want to be one of those 'hour' guys who is all bitter about reality TV. It's as viable as any other genre - when it's great, it's great. However! Reality does a certain thing. It burns quickly, brightly, and then it burns out. You can't repeat them.

I don't think the mainstream media understands people of color are multidimensional. For some reason, there's an idea that only white people are relatable. I don't think it's necessarily racist. But it's odd, because the people who watch the most television are black women, so we should be represented in more ways.

Reality television has borrowed so much from the world of politics, whether it's alliances or voting or the kind of strategizing that's done. Anything like that came from politics well before it came from reality television.