Just reading this article in the LA Times about Orange County and the reality show Laguna Beach. Yup, that show is exactly how we live our lives every day.

On election eve when much of the country was transfixed by the nation’s political races, a hastily assembled panel of school board candidates sat uneasily on stage at the Laguna Beach Women’s Club.

Facing them was an audience of parents looking for answers. Not answers about academic standards, curriculum or school funding, but answers on where candidates stood on something far more divisive: MTV.

One after another, the candidates savaged the television network and its gauzy reality show “Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County,” blaming it for everything from presenting local youths as rich brats to making the city a potential target for sex predators.

Laguna Beach High School, where many of the students on the series attend class, recently ranked No. 1 for alcohol and drug abuse in Orange County, according to the California Healthy Kids Survey.

JG