Fox Asks “Who’s Your Daddy?”
Just when I think I don’t have time for blogging . . . along comes the defender of red state America with “Who’s Your Daddy?” – a reality television show featuring “a young woman, adopted at birth, and her biological father” who are reunited before a live national audience.
Sounds innocent enough, “but wait, there’s a twist . . .” Before meeting her dad, “the young woman will be presented with eight men, all claiming to be her father (no comments about her biological mother now), and she must determine which one really is.” Even better, “there is $100,000 at stake!” (How this fits in is a bit vague.)
Rumor has it that this show is sponsored by Saks Newborn Nursery Adoption Centers and Adoption.com’s Adoption DNA testing (no cheating now). Loosing contestants will receive an “adoption fine art reprint” of the legitimate illegitimate contestant with her REAL father.
Thank the adoption gods for Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, who has turned his ire from the Adopt-a-Highway program to this unbelievable show.
According to Pertman, “the very idea [behind the show] is perverse and offensive. By turning adoption reunions into a game show, “Who’s Your Daddy?” takes an intensely personal and complex situation – and an increasingly commonplace one – and transforms it into a voyeuristic display.”
Now if only those dolls could speak and tell us who their REAL daddies are. Is that adoption music I hear playing in the background . . .
B V Theil
December 22, 2004 (8:50 am)
As an adoption assessor I often deal with stepfathers adopting their stepchild. I have to ask pertintent information about the biological father. The stories are often so sad. Desertion of the pregnant mother is often told. Whereabouts of bio-dad? Unknown. Being asked by a child “Why doesn’t my (bio)Dad want me?” is heartwrenching. The topic of who is your father is much too important to be trivialized for TV voyeurs.
Leslie Smith
December 22, 2004 (9:29 am)
I am adopted and find this program extremely offensive. If I truly wanted to look for my biological parents (whom I call my sperm donor and my carrier) there are legal ways to do so. Turning this process into a reality show is tasteless. My brother is also adopted and has located his biological parents, he did not realize the emotional effect it would have. It has not been as easy process for him or them. And I don’t think it is something that should be nationally televised.
Kevin Cronin
December 23, 2004 (7:25 am)
The Fox TV program “Who’s Your Daddy” sounds like it will demean the participants, but I favor reserving judgment until the program airs…and I wouldn’t support censorship. Fox has the right to demean people on their station (or allow them to demean themselves) and they frequently do so. Fox runs a good deal of scripted trash on TV and advertisers support it all. Should we be surprised ? We’ll eventually see even more peculiar subjects raised in this way, wdon’y yu think ?
The better questions are “Which adverisers are supporting this production” and “What are the motives, other than money, for the participants ? and… “Who is confident that the adoptees are truly what they appear to be” ?
Kevin
Brenda Dabney
December 23, 2004 (2:56 pm)
As an attorney for abused children who sometimes have the good fortune of being adopted by loving, non-abusive families before their childhood is completely obliterated by their biological parents, I find the concept of FOX’s show despicable. Perhaps the most offensive part of this idea is that several potential fathers are paraded in front of the adoptee — something that I too often see in my own legal practice where unmarried mothers are frequently unsure about the paternity of their children and offer several different men to the court for DNA determination. FOX’s idea of programming seems to be just another version of The Jerry Springer Show, meant to demean and criticize people who are not saavy enough to find the very concept of revealing their most personal secrets to the entire nation absolutely revolting. What is for many people in our country a very happy and lucky event, the network is making fodder for audiences with nothing better to do than participate in another outrageous mockery of the American family.
Anonymous
January 19, 2005 (5:34 am)
I think the attacks on this show demonstrate the kind of weak hold on public sentiment that the side currently calling all the shots has.
Maybe not this show, but the reign of terror has already gone on for far too long to survive any real light. Shows like Starting Over on Nbc are creating grassroots resistance to yesteryears unchecked brainwashing.
I am very glad she who picked the right man was broadcast first. I know we won’t be so lucky if the others get broadcast…
Ray Buffer
January 20, 2005 (12:14 pm)
My open letter to FOX is posted at:
http://www.father.2ya.com/
It is as follows:
An Open Letter to the
FOX BROADCASTING COMPANY & FOX ENTERTAINMENT GROUP
On behalf of many outraged adoptees, I wish to protest FOX Television’s descent into deplorable reality programming with its new, “Who’s Your Daddy” game show. For millions of adoptees, the experience of having been adopted and the search for one’s roots has never been a game.
No matter how your network attempts to frame the content of this show, its intent is clear: attract viewers to a risqué topic, and thereby attract advertisers. I noticed that your own FOX News is attempting to mitigate the outrage of adoptees by rationalizing that the show may also uncover the identities of fathers for the new generation of children whose fathers are sperm donors. It is more than obvious that your network is now backpedaling away from this train-wreck of a show before it even airs, due to a guilty conscience.
Defending your show by saying that the adoptees and the birthfathers involved volunteered does not make it right. Both parties are either so desperate for truth that they leaped at the producers offer, or desperate for money – that they sold out the millions of adoptees and birthparents who are reeling from the secrecy barrier presented by many laws in many states.
Without question, the reunions of adoptees have been exploited by others in different formats and venues, but treating the quest for identity as a game show is like kicking a disabled person repeatedly.
Adoptees are disabled from knowing their identities unless laws are changed, private investigators are hired, or rich and greedy producers choose to exploit them.
What is next for FOX?
“Name That Aborted Fetus?”
“Who Wants to Marry a Vegetable?
I implore you to leave this show on the shelf, and strive to create quality programming rather than sensationalistic and insulting television.
Sincerely,
Ray Buffer
Founder of the Adoptees’ Caucus for Truth
No One Important
January 20, 2005 (12:18 pm)
The exploitative nature of adoption has come back to bite itself in the butt with the subtext of this show!
Oh, the irony, oh, the richness of the irony!!
As a woman who was exploited of her child, I have to say:
1) I find this both karmic AND hilarious.
2) The problem is not this show. The real problem is closed adoption records. You already know why.
and
3) This is one of the rare occasions where I
will enjoy a FOX show, the other excepton being The Simpsons.
Congrats on your new son!!!
Treeca Dyer
January 20, 2005 (12:19 pm)
I, too, have been very concerned about the new TV reality show. As if a network show could begin to convey the reality of an adult child searching for her biological father with any degree of accuracy, feeling, or socially redeeming value. I consider this show to be little more than voyeurism, adoption pornography, so to speak. My greatest concern, though, has been the realization that nothing is sacred, off limits now. TV has the license to delve into matters that should be between a child and her parents simply because someone is greedy enough to participate in a “game show” like this. I hope that FOX Network has viewer backlash in such proportions as to take the show off the air and have second thoughts about putting something in its place that should be as private as this subject.
And one last thought. Since the Supreme Court has determined that a woman’s right to privacy is covered by the penumbra of the Bill of Rights when it comes to an abortion, doesn’t that same penumbra cover the unknown and unnamed mother’s right to privacy in this show??? If I knew the biological mother, I’d encourage her to sue and get injunctive relief to get the show off the air because it violated my right to privacy.
DUSTY LANE
February 2, 2005 (12:42 pm)
I’M THE BIO-FATHER OF TJ MYERS ON THE FOX SHOW…
WHO’S YOUR DADDY..(DUSTY LANE), IT WAS AND IS ONE OF THE GREATEST TIME IN MY LIVE… IF IT WASN’T FOR FOX, WE WOULD HAVE NEVER BEEN BROUGHT TOGETHER…NO ONE CAN TELL THE TRUE OR WHOLE STORY IN A COUPLE OF PARAGRAPHS OR SOME CRITIC TO SUMMARIZE THE WHOLE STORY TO THE UNKNOWING PERSONS…E-MAIL ME FOR THE INSIDE STORY AND THE TRUST ABOUT WHAT THE ADOPTION CENTERS DON’T WANT YOU TO HEAR. AND WITH ALLEGED 1.5 BILLION DOLLARS, THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT. THAT’S WHY THEY WENT AFTER MY DAUGHTER AND FOX, TO DISCREDIT THE SHOW, BUT WE HAVE HELPED THOUSANDS OF POTENTIAL RE-UNIONS…………..WHERE IS THAT IN THE NEWS MEDIA. . its hard to know you were given up by some one you think should have loved you and you don’t know why, maybe they did love you to have you, so you could have been
aborted…but you have life and a family now, hopefully they love you too! there are thousands of adoptee who want to find there birth-place and there are even more of us that had to give up our children who want to find them…
THE TRUTH, IS THAT SO HARD!!!
It’s not for every one, but the one thing i do know is, that big question inside,the unknown!
DUSTY LANE
dustylane@cox.net
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