Let's say it together people, the L-word is fictional

So, the second season of the L-Word starts up in a couple weeks. And, once again, we start hearing comments like this:

"Where are all the unstylish, multifaceted, middle-income, co-op-dwelling, herbal-tea-drinking dykes living outside the dominant culture? ... Where are all the people forging their own, distinctly lesbian, ways of being? Where are all the real butches? Where are all the leatherdykes? Hell, were are all my own hockey buddies?"
-- Reporter Robin Perelle dissing TV's "The L Word" in the Dec. 23 issue of the Vancouver gay newspaper Xtra! West.

When I read this I can only think to myself, has this person ever turned on a television set before? I mean, she must one of those people who has never owned a television, never even looked at a television, until the day that someone duct-taped her to a couch and forced her to watch the L-word. Because, really, if she had any experience at all with television, she'd realize that it's fictional. Not only that, but it's a special kind of fiction where everyone is good looking, families always get along (at least by the end of the episode), and, when they all sit down to dinner, they only use the chairs on one side of the table. The Cleavers were not representative of families in the 1950s. Same goes for the Brady Bunch in the 60s/70s and Alf in the 80s. And, guess what? Sex and the City is not representative of 4 single women in New York City. So why should the L-word represent all lesbians? (Actually, the quote above does a worse job at representing my lesbian friends than the L-word does.)

You could spend hours flipping through the channels looking for the teenagers with acne, the families who never make up, or brilliant rescues that come a minute too late, i.e. the way things work in real life, and you will never find it. Television is not real life, and any resemblance is purely coincidental. So if you want to see leatherdykes or herbal-tea-drinking dykes, go to the nearest leatherbar or co-op. And if you want to be entertained by impossibly beautiful people in unrealistic, yet amusing, situations that magically resolve themselves by the end of the episode, turn on the tv. Let's try to remember the difference, shall we?