CBS Creates Poverty Porn In New Series That Makes Poor Families Grovel For $101,000

CBS just debuted its new poverty porn reality show, The Briefcase by exploiting the working poor  that once made up the American middle class. It packages this exploitation neatly into a pretty horrific hour of prime time television that is just short of the “Bum Fights” and “Ghetto Fights” videos that used to be pawned on late night TV after “Girls Gone Wild” commercials.

Each show starts out asking to two unwitting financial strapped families, “What would you do with $101,000?”

Then the two families choose between two no-win options of being financially solvent and appearing heartless and greedy or drowning in and have the audience recognize them as selfless and giving.

The show focuses on two “middle-class” families a questionable and highly exaggerated take on the phrase, since both families are buried in debtwith one primary breadwinner, and living one pay check away from financial ruin.

Both families are misled to believe are participating in a documentary about money. Instead, a producer from the show unexpectedly comes to their house with a suitcase full of a life-changing $101,000 in cold hard cash. This is reality TV and as we all know there is a catch.

Both families are then informed that somewhere out there, there’s another family “who’s also in need,” and are given a choice of keeping all of the money, keep some of the money, can give it all away. Neither family knows that the other family also has a suitcase full of cash and is debating how much, if any, they’ll share. And since both families were originally told they were merely going to be the subjects of a documentary, neither of them really signed up for this exercise in televised torture that reminds the viewer of the ferry boat scene in The Dark Knight.

The whole show is disgusting and CBS Founder William S. Paley is probably spinning in his grave. We’re told via voice over at the show’s outset that, “All across America, hard-working, middle-class families are feeling the impact of rising debt and shrinking paychecks.”

That’s absolutely true, middle-class families are feeling the impact of rising debt and shrinking paychecks and CBS’s answer to that problem is apparently to manipulate and exploit those families in reality show.