Armed and Famous

Well, "Armed and Famous" aired tonight, and because of other duties I had to tape-delay my exposure to the folks of Muncie and their five new police officers: Jack Osbourne, Erik Estrada, Trish Stratus, LaToya Jackson, and Jason "Wee Man" Acuna.

I approached this show with some trepidation. I make fun of Muncie all the time, but I resent when out-of-towners do it. As a native, I have license, but when out-of-towners and pretentious people cut on my hometown, I often ask, "So where do you call home?" Their answers are usually hilarious.

"Gary!"
"Terre Haute!"
"Connersville!"

Or some other podunk Indiana town that makes Muncie look like Vegas.

So I expected the producers to have their fun ridiculing Muncie and its residents, who are mostly hard-working people who take care of their families and respect other people. Sure, you can check out the Star Press opinion page and get your fill of local yokels and their ignorance, but really, what town doesn't have that? What town doesn't have crooked politicians? What college town doesn't have citizens who resent the college? What town doesn't have unemployment problems and retail saturation and poorly maintained streets and bad neighborhoods and drug dealers and poorly funded schools and so on? Muncie is just like any other town, with one big difference:

People love to pick on it more than any other town I know.

I figured the producers of "Armed and Famous" would drag Muncie through the mud, and the C-list celebrities would look down at it. I figured they'd rip Muncie with the old high-and-mighty approach.

Wrong.

The real comedy in "Armed and Famous" is not so much the criminals (who are no trashier or more ridiculous than ones you'd see on a rerun of "Cops"). The comedy comes from watching these actors try to take on a real job.

LaToya Jackson: "I've always wanted to work at McDonald's, and I've always wanted to be a police officer."

Tonight I saw Erik Estrada get shocked with a TASER. That's damn good television.

I saw Trish Stratus consoling a family whose house had burned down, telling them that as long as they were all alive, everything would be okay, and that everything is replaceable except their loved ones, who all walked away fine. She even hugged people.

Sure, that old, crack-dealing woman who kept calling Estrada "Ponch" -- that was pretty damn funny, but drug dealers are everywhere. Muncie doesn't have the market cornered on any of this.

And sure, most of this stuff is staged. This is far from "reality." This is sleekly produced Hollywood crap, and yet it's entertaining because they let the actors do the entertaining, and not the people of Muncie, who don't deserve any more ridicule than they already receive from elitist pricks who somehow think that Kokomo or Hammond or Greensburg or New Castle is better.

People from outside Indiana love to pick on Muncie and Indiana in general. We're a bunch of hayseeds. These are people from...Ohio...Illinois...Kentucky. Give me a break.

And for people who've come to Indiana for work...those people somehow think they have a license to ridicule as well, yet they never mention how if their town was so damn special, they wouldn't need to work here. I hate that shit.

The producers of "Armed and Famous" took my hometown and they did something I didn't expect -- something that people don't always do with Muncie and its people.

They treated us with respect. I'm hooked on that alone.