“Big Brother” — some one should be watching you.
In a new low for reality TV, the producers are allowing a “houseguest” to lie to other contestants that his wife is suffering from melorheostosis, a disease that strikes the young, bringing a lifetime of disability, deformity and pain.
On Wednesday night, despicable contestant Matt Hoffman snarked in his private video confession that he’d been spreading the word that his wife was striken with melorheostosis and that he was on the show to win the $500,000 first prize for an expensive operation.
“Just to be abundantly clear, my wife does not have melorheostosis or any other disease,” he laughingly told the audience when none of the other “Big Brother” contestants could hear him. “Who would vote off a guy who’s just trying to save his wife’s leg?”
I can answer that! All the parents coping with a relentlessly progressive disease overtaking their children, that’s who.
Matt says he first heard of the disease on a cable TV show and was simply spouting back what he could remember.
The Melorheostosis Association, for one, isn’t laughing at this clever ruse.
“If Matt thinks melorheostosis is funny, he should look at the video on our Web site showing some of the beautiful little children afflicted with this catastrophic disease,” Kathleen Harper, chair of the Melorheostosis Association (www.melorheostosis.com) told The Post yesterday.
Because the disease is so rare, there is little money for research and very little hope.
Yet, Hoffman squawked that, “If lies and sympathy get me the half million, I swear I’ll make a sizeable donation to the foundation for this disease just for letting me use it and exploit it a little bit.” But no, they didn’t let you.
CBS responded by saying, ” ‘Big Brother’ is a reality show about watching a group of people who have no privacy 24/7 . . . At times, the houseguests make comments, reveal prejudices and other beliefs that we do not condone.”
Right. Meantime, Harper wants a sitdown with CBS brass. Education is everything.
As for Matt? If he does win, he should donate it all to research. Karma is a bitch, baby!