I believe it is both a strength and a weakness of my nature that I simply have to rant when I see a social injustice— be it big or small—being perpetrated on the masses. And that is why I simply have to speak up about the grave injustice being done to Penn Jillette, Steve Guttenberg, Adam Carolla, and the rest of the saps who think they have a chance of winning this season’s “Dancing with the Stars.”

As far as reality TV goes, the cheesy “Dancing” is less offensive than many other reality series and I have been known to give in to watching it occasionally. And, yes, I realize the words “fair” and “reality TV” create something of an oxymoron, but I still couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw both Broadway star Marissa Jaret Winokur and Olympic gold medalist Kristi Yamaguchi in the female line-up for the season. Clearly ABC has decided they no longer want this show to be an amateur competition in which C or D list celebs make a career comeback by losing weight while they cha-cha. And obviously ABC has had enough of hunky guys winning the coveted disco ball trophy, and they want a female to win. Nothing else could explain ABC so clearly stacking the deck with professionals.
In case you didn’t know, Marissa won a Tony for shaking and shimmying as Tracy Turnblad in “Hairspray”. And Kristi Yamaguchi has had who knows how many hours of dance lessons as part of her training as a figure skater. She even competed internationally in pairs skating in which she did all kinds of fancy flips and turns. So I am pretty sure that means the rest of the “Dancing” cast is simply there as filler
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love Broadway musicals and I was once obsessed with figure skating. But my sense of fair play still makes me want to cry foul. If networks are going to take off quality dramatic programming, leaving me to choose the lesser of the reality TV evils, then I’d at least like to feel like Marlee Matlin’s appearance on the show is something more than a cheap stunt and that an underdog like Monica Seles has a chance at becoming a household name again.