In the voyeurism of Reality TV, the viewer's passivity is kept intact, pampered and massaged and force-fed Chicken McNuggets of carefully edited snippets that permit him or her to sit in easy judgment and feel superior at watching familiar strangers make fools of themselves. Reality TV looks in only one direction: down.

In addition he recently contributed the foreword to Geoffrey Beene's forthcoming book Identity. Career
Since arriving in New York Wolcott has been a columnist on media and pop culture for such publications as Esquire Harper's Magazine The New Yorker The New York Review of Books and New York Magazine. From there he moved to New York City to work at The Village Voice.

James Wolcott (born 10 December 1952 in Baltimore Maryland) is an American journalist known for his critique of contemporary media. Wolcott is the cultural critic for Vanity Fair and contributes to The New Yorker.