Here’s hoping that “reality” television doesn’t start to be reflected in the reality of our daily lives.

“American Idol,” the popular television show in which would-be entertainers compete for the chance to be propelled into professional careers, has been much in the news lately. It’s not because of the high quality of performances on the series, but because of the behavior of the panel of experts that reviews the so-called talent.

The goal of one of television’s top-rated shows has become not so much to showcase talented amateur performers as to publicly berate and embarrass people who have no future in show business. And it’s all in the name of entertainment.

Instead of televising performances by the best of the best performers, the show chooses the worst of the worst. The performances certainly are not entertaining, but that’s OK. The real entertainment of this show comes after the performances when the panel of professional experts critique the amateur artists.

They hurl insults at the performers while laughing at their own cleverness. On recent shows, the panel has sent people crashing into a locked door as they hurried to make an exit and reduced one young performer to tears.

Yes, it’s entertainment at its best.

As humiliating as this experience can be for the performers, it is even more damaging to viewers, especially young people. Those who choose to appear on “American Idol” know what they are getting into. If they’ve ever watched the show, they have to know that their chances of success are very low and the chances of humiliation very high.

What’s really sad about the show is its portrayal of bullying behavior as not only acceptable, but entertaining. Those associated with the show as well as many television writers defend “American Idol” as harmless entertainment, pointing out that even some of the worst performers now have agents and are pursuing professional careers.

But the overriding message that is being broadcast into American living rooms every week is that it’s fine – in fact, it’s funny – to watch poor and dumb acts and then berate people, especially people you consider beneath you. Is that really a message that’s needed in a society that already is wracked by philosophical divisions and an inability to be civil to one another?

It would be wonderful if the American public made a statement by refusing to watch “American Idol” in its present form and feed its derisive attempt at humor. We all have better, more constructive, things to do.