Sweet sixteen show chafes those without the fat checkbook

The Misanthrope by ETHAN CHATAGNIER

My roommate asked not to be named after I returned home Thursday to find him watching “My Super Sweet 16.” The show, a standout atrocity in MTV’s army of horrible shows, follows morbidly affluent teenagers in their quests to throw the ultimate birthday party.

After watching for a few minutes, the exclamation, “I hate our culture!” burst out of me. This goes beyond my inability to understand white America’s predilection for hot dogs and casseroles, on one end of the spectrum, and their idolatry of H2s on the other end. The fact that enough demand exists to justify broadcasting teens’ birthdays on pop TV makes my stomach twist.

For years, I refused to believe that people like this exist. Teens so spoiled and out of touch with the real world that they can tell their parents they just won’t accept anything short of a Range Rover for their birthdays, or complain about how embarrassing their father is while he spends thousands of dollars on her party.

As disturbing as this tuned-out, trouble-free existence is, it’s even scarier that there’s a market for it. People want to watch it.

Our fascination with excess is not new, but it is growing. Where the previous age of television had “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” we have “My Super Sweet 16,” “Rich Girls” and “Cribs,” among a wash of other celebrities, like Paris Hilton, whose notability is reliant on their wealth.

For once, I’d like to see a show that contradicts the trend — a show about normal girls, or lifestyles of the middle-class and struggling. The lives of the rich and the empty-headed just don’t do it for me.