Barely Human: TLC

For the past year, Philadelphia, a city once synonymous with sports fans chucking snowballs at Santa and deliberately barfing on the children of our Men in Blue, has become an inexplicable comeback story. It takes a lot to bring a city down. And if that city has stared the devil in the face and said, "bring it on, Butt Plug!", it's damn near impossible.

But there is one way. And just when we were doing so well, we found it. How? Well, you take one of the region's greatest Cinderella Stories, Penn's Landing, and invite four of five of the world's worst people to take a proverbial shit all over it.

An un-ironic Dee Reynolds with veneers?

Yep, this May 30th, Kate Gosselin, Buddy Valastro, and the Duggar family will be the source material for a block party at the Great Plaza. Apparently the reanimated corpse of Strom Thurman was unavailable. 

If you don't know who they are, well, count yourself amongst the few who can still claim to be human. Unfortunately, I know better (or worse). They're reality "celebrities" from TLC's infamous sideshows: people with litters of kids and an irate New Yorker so annoying he couldn't hold a job in the same building as Rachel Ray.

TLC, the ironic acronym for "The Learning Channel," has been peddling what amounts to Freak Porn since it abandoned educational content in the late 1990s. I'm not saying that prolific mothers, dwarves, or the obese should be objectified, but TLC - and apparently the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation - sure as shit seems to be.

If you're one of the soulless fans of Kate Plus Eight or Cake Boss, head down to Penn's Landing for a photograph with some unrealebrities who I'm quite certain can't cast a shadow. If not, get out of town. Philadelphia was doing so well, but in a month I'm pretty sure it will be flushed down Hell's toilet bowl.