Other Shows: Homeland Security USA: This Is Your Car On Drugs

ABC’s new docu-series Homeland Security USA follows the day-to-day adventures of border patrolmen, customs agents and the like, and you could easily—and not entirely inaccurately—think of it as a shameless sop to the anti-immigration crowd, feeding their fear that the U.S. borders are being overrun by drug dealers and terrorists, all trying to exploit one of the many holes in our first line of defense. Or you could think of HSUSA as a just another benign “how they do it” reality show, dosed with the same subtle self-righteousness of shows like COPS , Airline and Parking Wars , where viewers are asked to approve the petty power trips of low-wage working folk over the everyday idiocy of those they torment. Myself, I generally enjoy those petty-power-trip reality dramas, because I—and most other fans of these shows, I hope—always keep in mind their subtle “manipulation by access.” I understand that these kinds of shows are largely going to ignore any lapses on the part of their protagonists, ... (link)