Reality TV at its worst

Last night while flipping the channels and coming across what I thought was a documentary about a dating service for the mentally challenged, I quickly realized it was actually a reality TV show. At first I thought "Aww, what a good idea. The mentally challenged need love too!" But when I realized it was a reality show, I became a little upset. Now I know I may not be the most sensitive person in the world and I've been known to throw out the word "downsy" a time or two, but exploiting those people like that is just wrong! I was so disgusted by this show that I didn't bother to watch the entire episode, but in the 5 minutes that I did watch, my roommate laughed and mocked their slowness. According to one of my co-workers who watched the show, it was done in good taste and didn't portray any of the people in a negative light, but when you have two downsy people making goo goo eyes at each other while spilling their dinner all over themselves, how is that not portraying them in a negative light?

Ordinarily, I would laugh at something like that but my mother has worked in MRDD for almost 30 years so I have a different outlook on this. When I was 5 years old I was home for a few weeks because I had chicken pox. My mom would call me everyday from work to check-up on me and she would always put one of her patients on the phone (I think his name was Bob) to say hello. Bob was retarded as hell and had no idea who he was talking to or even what he was saying, but as a 5 year old I thought Bob was great and I asked about him occasionally for years to come. I'm getting away from my original point, which is that some things just aren't suitable for reality TV. If you want to have dumb blondes running around naked on Big Bother, fine. If you want to have opportunistic hoes vying for the "love" of Flava Flav, fine. But don't be so cruel to take advantage of people who probably don't understand exactly what they've gotten themselves into. I still think the dating service is a really good idea, because unless they happen to both live in the same institution, how else are two retarded people going to find each other? But leave the cameras out of the equation. They're slow, life is already hard enough!