This post was originally going to be about the History Channel paying $3.5 million to advertise their show “Swamp People” during the Super Bowl. As I was reading over the story, however, I came across this paragraph:

“Swamp People” is History’s third most-watched original series, trailing only “Pawn Stars” and “American Pickers.” “Pawn Stars” throughout 2011 averaged 7.02 million L7 viewers, making it the fifth most popular program on basic cable. “Pickers” averaged 5.78 million.

Yeah… none of those shows are about history. Not even a little bit. “Swamp People” is about Cajun dudes catching alligators or something, “Pawn Stars” is just about a fancy pawn shop, and “American Pickers” is about buying and selling antiques. To bastardize a great Mitch Hedberg joke, this would be like if the Food Network started airing a reality show about farmers. It’s ridiculous. Yes, the network’s ratings are up, but I don’t see how they can keep calling themselves “The History Channel” like they’re some beacon for educational programming when their schedule is full of shows like this. I’m on to you, History Channel! YOUR HEAD RESTS UPON A BED OF LIES!

But, the more I thought about it, I realized that the History Channel is far from the only network guilty of this. I’ve compiled a collection of other offenders after the jump.

A&E (Arts and Entertainment) – If anyone can explain to me — TO MY SATISFACTION — what shows about crippling psychological issues and substance abuse like “Hoarders” and “Intervention” have to do with arts and/or entertainment, I will give you $100.

AMC (American Movie Classics) – Despite the word “movie” being right there in the title, AMC has become the home to a number of quality TV dramas, including “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.” I would be tempted to give them a pass for this if they didn’t also air reruns of “CSI: Miami” and classic movies like Jurassic Park III and The Sandlot: Heading Home (the direct-to-video third Sandlot film, and an absolute travesty).

Bravo – Formerly the home to a lineup of arts-based shows, centered around their staple “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” the network is now home to a menagerie of shows about hairdressers and insanely rich, drunken harpies fighting over perceived slights involving dinner reservations. The lesson here is this: between this network, A&E, and education cutbacks, the arts in this country are totally f-cked. Our entire economy will be based around getting sh-thoused and punching your friends by 2020.

MTV (Music Television) – The channel that used to air music videos and news now airs shows about pregnant teenagers and orange, roided-up millionaires traveling the world and embarrassing America at every stop.

TLC (The Learning Channel) – I think we’ve been a little unfair to TLC. I’ve learned a ton about soullessly exploiting your own children and other people’s disabilities for financial gain by watching this channel.

VH1 (Video Hits One) – Another music channel, formerly specializing in Michael Bolton and Celine Dion videos, that changed its format over the last few years. It now features a lineup full of dating shows and reality competitions based around washed up recording artists from 20 years ago courting strippers, and spinoffs about the most cartoonish competitors on those shows.

And that’s just a sampling. I’m sure if I sat around and did more research, I could find a bunch more. Feel free to add your own examples in the comments, or just silently be irritated about it for weeks, like I was before today.

It’s strange enough peering into the fabricated reality of Reality TV, but it can extra surreal — and often painfully sad — when actual reality seeps into that world, as is the case of U.S. Army paratrooper Wesley Durden. Durden was eliminated last night from the reality show, “The Next Great Baker,” and it wasn’t until after the airing that TLC revealed with an In Memoriam card that Durden was dead. He had died of a self-inflicted gunshot would back in October. The 28 year old left behind a wife, seven-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter.

The knee-jerk criticism, at least on Twitter, has been to somehow fault TLC’s handling of the matter and its decision to wait until after the airing to reveal the news. I don’t know, however, if there was a better way to handle it. The suicide came long after production on the season had wrapped, and at least TLC didn’t exploit his death in advance for ratings, as would’ve been the criticism had they announced it earlier (and, in fact, was the criticism leveled at NBC a few years ago when a contestant on a reality boxing show, “The Contender” took his own life after he was eliminated). Was it insensitive to mention it at all? Or was it insensitive that they didn’t mention it earlier?

Regardless of how TLC handled it, and regardless of what one thinks of reality TV (and there’s no reason to believe his elimination was responsible), the obvious tragedy here is that a solider — one who had been deployed in two tours in Iraq — is dead. That’s sad no matter how you look at it.

This weekend, TLC — which no longer has anything to do with learning, and everything to do with cruelty to people — will debut its new reality series, “Geek Love,” which follows the speed-dating scene among sci-fi dorks at various Comic-Con type conventions. Basically, it’s a window into a world of lonely desperate people searching for a connection beyond what they get from their television sets and action figures. It’s an incredibly easy premise to make fun of, and of course, the overriding temptation is to point and laugh at the overweight geeks with their Chewbacca mating calls and homely geek women wielding light sabers.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? That’s exactly what they want. They want us to point and laugh at the misfortune of others, which serves a dual purpose: It boosts our own egos by comparison, and it boosts the profits of the cable networks that exploit the fringes. It’s mean-spirited television gawkery. Of course, “Geek Love” is not the first of its kind; it’s simply the latest in a series of reality shows designed to elicit our mockery and mean-spirited derision. After the jump, we’ll examine four more reality shows that prey upon our collective schaudenfreude.

Virgin Diaries: How can you not make fun of this show? It’s about 30-year-old virgins who are completely and hilariously clueless about sex! Of course, TLC insists that they’re not exploiting these virgins; they’re celebrating them! “A lot of stories about later in life virgins talk about it like a problem. We want to show that this is something that can be celebrated.” Right. Because when I see the GIF below, my first instinct is to celebrate the love of two people that have finally found one another and will bask in the joy of their simultaneous de-flowerment. Uh huh.

Toddlers and Tiaras: “Toddlers and Tiaras” is perhaps the most cruel of all these reality shows because it takes pre-adolescent girls and subjects them to our collective judgement. These girls — five or six years old — aren’t allowed to be “girls,” they’re infantalized women buried in three inches of pancake make up and dolled up to look like American geishas. Why? So their selfish mothers can feel good about themselves? What do we get out of it? Security in the knowledge that we’re not as horrible as the parents, who scream at their daughters for having fat arms or for eating too much junk food. And, of course, these poor girls are going to grow up to be just like their despicable mothers.

16, 17, 18 19 Kids and Counting: It’s not that the Duggars are just kookoobananas, they are. It’s that they’re raising an army of loony tunes nutjobs that will grow up to be cast members of “Virgin Diaries” and continue the shame cycle of American reality television. And how do they feed those kids? Keep them clothed? The profits they make from a show about how messed up it is to have 19 kids (and a miscarriage), of course, all the while feeding into the TMZization of the Internet. Why do we watch? Because we can point and laugh at how horribly irresponsible, selfish and narcissistic it is to flood civilization with a troop of wackjobs created in their own image under the guise of religion. Hey Michelle: Your vagina is not an assembly line equipped to poop out your own production of Oliver. Put a lid on it, lady, and save some of the world’s resources for the rest of us.

The Kardashians: It’s one thing to exploit the lives of geeks, virgins, over-populaters or even the obese. But I think it crosses the line when you build a show around mentally retarded people. That’s low, even by reality show standards. Those poor women; they can barely string a coherent sentence together, and I’m pretty sure they’d get their asses handed to them by Forrest Gump in a game of Chutes and Ladders (“What’s a chute?”). Yet, we laugh and point at these mentally impaired celebutards who are forced into Botox treatments and plastic surgery whenever they are disfigured by wrinkles and laugh lines. The sad sisters are even forced to share a limited number of brain cells. Moreover, no one will love the sad things; their husbands keep leaving them. And we, the viewer, we point, and we laugh, as we watch these unfortunate brain damaged women try to navigate complex obstacles, like stairs, or face difficult questions, like which shoe goes on the left foot, and which goes on the right.

“All-American Muslim” airs on Sunday nights on TLC. It’s about five Muslim families living in Dearborn, Michigan, the city with the highest Muslim community in the country. According to Amy Winter, TLC’s general manager, her network wanted to show that “these are families that might have beliefs that are different than yours, but we are all living similar daily lives and hopefully we will bring that to light.”

A few days ago, hardware store giant Lowe’s pulled its advertising from “Muslim,” due to threats of a protest from the Florida Family Association. (Florida is the worst.) In a statement, the FFA, led by David Caton, said, “The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to the liberties…that the majority of Americans cherish.”

(The FFA has a long history of pointing their bigoted blame on TV shows, like “Modern Family” because of Cam and Mitchell and “Degrassi” because of everything. Their website is currently down, due to a much-deserved hacking effort, so you won’t be able to enjoy their official ignorance until later.)

Many people are pissed at Lowe’s pulling their ad money from the show, but I don’t think the overpriced big-box retailer is really the problem; it’s a business decision and at least they gave some money in the first place, even though they knew the show was going to be a lightning rod for controversy. Focusing on that part of the issue is like worrying about a single flea when you’ve already got the Bubonic Plague. The real issue at hand is that it’s 2011 (almost 2012!), and we’re still fu*king afraid of a TV show about Muslims.

My fiancée is Muslim (she was born here, her parents in Bangladesh) and I’ve bared witness to verbal hate crimes thrown her way, so maybe that’s why I’m particularly sensitive to this issue. (And why I apologize for the serious’ish tone and lack of dick jokes in this post – I tried to fit one in, and it just didn’t work…Oh wait.) I’ve also watched “All-American Muslim” and it’s a very good series; it’s what reality shows should be. The unscripted “All-American Muslims” is doing for Muslims what “The Cosby Show” did for African-Americans – showing different religions and races without stereotypes to Christian white people, basically. And considering 61% of the country doesn’t personally know a Muslim, it’s an important show, too. We live in a society where pop culture dictates the mainstream, so rather than protest a big-box (that probably won’t feel a dent in their profits anyways) to prove you’re mad at their decision, watch “All-American Muslim” instead. TLC won’t cancel a highly rated show, and that influence you hold is more powerful than any poorly made hammer you can buy at Lowe’s.

UPDATE: Now with high-quality video.

Next week, TLC will air “Virgin Diaries,” a special in which hapless idiots get married before knowing if they’re sexually compatible — before knowing ANYTHING about sex, apparently. That’s what we see in this promo when a couple shares their first kiss on their wedding day. It’s positively glorious, and you must watch it and share it with everyone you know right this instant. That groom is one lucky dude.

[The Set; thanks to Vince at FilmDrunk for the GIF]

TLC is actually making something I don’t outright despise: a dating show called “Geek Love” in which sci-fi enthusiasts engage in speed dating at places like Comic-Con, where the pool of hapless, socially inept virgins is unusually deep.

The network has ordered Geek Love, a project that follows a speed-dating service at nerd-drawing events like Comic-Con. TLC greenlit two half-hour specials that will air next month and plans to make the project a full-fledged series if the specials draw large enough ratings. [EW]

EW also has an exclusive video of highlights, which I absolutely recommend watching. It starts with a guy touting his Chewbacca call, then features the girl in the inset picture saying, “It’s hard to find someone in the outside world you like because it’s really hard to find someone who understands you.” I can’t imagine why that might be.

There are few things I love to hate more than TLC’s programming, and TLC’s programming is rarely more hate-able than during the holiday season. Here’s only a sampling of what cable’s most shameless network (aside from maybe E!) has on tap in December:

On Extreme Christmas Trees, the special uncovers the lengths some will go to make their tree really sparkle… One is so spectacular, it lands in the Swedish Art Gallery and another in Las Vegas boasts more than $200,000 in ornaments…

Invasion of the Christmas Lights: Europe follows six families try to create the most elaborate lighting displays in that part of the world. No matter how much hard work, ingenuity, and risk the task takes, they make sure the holidays get their proper, um, spotlight…

TODDLERS & TIARAS HOLIDAY EPISODE — The holidays come alive at the Southern Celebrity Glitzmas Pageant in New Jersey. Three-year-old Laila and her mom have gone all out with a Rockette routine while scene stealers Riley, 5 and Bob, 6 tear up the stage with their fierce drag queen moves.

MY BIG FAT GYPSY CHRISTMAS — TLC peels back yet another intriguing layer of traveller culture as the cameras revisit dress-maker Thelma Madine to a small town in Ireland where roaming travellers return each year to celebrate Christmas (along with extravagant weddings and First Communions). This festive episode will catch up with some of the characters from the series and promises to deliver over-the-top parties and of course huge dresses. [THR]

To recap: EXTREME XXXMAS TREES! Crazy Christmas lights… IN EUROPE! Toddler Rockettes! And HUUUUUUUUGE gypsy dresses!!!! Even with excessive exclamation points and all-caps, this sounds boring as sh*t to me. Sometime I really don’t understand America.

You may remember him from such drivers' ed films as "Alice's Adventures Through the Windshield Glass" and "The Decapitation of Larry Leadfoot."

TLC has long been America’s #1 channel for people seeking a 21st century freak show, but the cable network is edging into truTV’s territory with its newest offering:

The network has ordered D.U.I., a new series that goes behind the scenes of drunk-driving law enforcement in Oklahoma. TLC has picked up 12 episodes, with six debuting next month and the rest planned for 2012.

Unlike COPS, the TLC show just focuses on drunk-driving suspects and follows their story from being pulled over and being interrogated, to, if necessary, arrest and sentencing. [EW]

I freely admit that drunk people getting arrested can be hilarious (see: donka doo balls), but as someone who’s been pulled over under suspicion of DUI three different times (and never arrested!), I don’t think I could enjoy this. Even when you’re SOBER it’s an incredibly annoying/scary process. “I can smell alcohol in your vehicle.” Yeah officer, did you not see the three Marines passed out in my car? Or did you just think they were really tired from volunteering at a soup kitchen on a Saturday night?

The Earth’s population has gone from 1 billion people to 7 billion in just 200 years, and overpopulation will drain the planet’s natural resources before this century is over. But hey, isn’t it just TERRIFIC that Michelle Duggar of TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting” is pregnant with her 20th child? Ha ha, f*cking fantastic news!

“We are due in April and just thrilled,” Michelle told Ann Curry during the ["Today Show"] broadcast [video below]. “We have the motto in our house that there’s always room for one more.”

The couple welcomed their 19th child, Josie, in 2009. During the pregnancy, Michelle suffered gall-bladder problems and preeclampsia, giving birth to Josie three and a half months prematurely. At birth, the infant weighed one pound, six ounces but is now a healthy toddler about to celebrate her second birthday.

“We’ll have to wait and see [about more children],” said Michelle. “We would love however many the Lord sees fit to give us.” [THR]

Congratulations, Michelle! Now that you’re 44 and cruising toward menopause, I sure hope the Lord doesn’t see fit to give your next baby Down Syndrome. You know, the Lord works in such mysterious ways, the way He statistically makes it more dangerous for an older woman to give birth. I guess just keep praying really hard!

Sigh. There’s going to be a one-hour special on the world’s shortest man, Edward Hernandez, a 25-year-old Colombian not much larger than a corgi. On TLC. Of course TLC. It would be nowhere else but TLC. From THR:

At 27 inches tall (that’s 2 feet 3 inches, people!) he’s the Guinness world record holder for being the shortest man on earth. The special follows Hernandez as he deals with his newfound fame and wonders just how long it will all last before someone else takes the title from him.

There’s video below, and it just depresses the hell out of me. Seriously, watching TLC is like stepping inside the tent of a Depression-era circus. The lions are all sick and mangy, the ringmaster is an oily two-bit swindler, and the people in the freak show are kept in cages and brought out only to be gawked and prodded with sticks. TLC is awful.