One year ago Actress Denise Richards, the former wife of actor Charlie Sheen, recently stepped into self-parody. Allowing herself to be filmed in her “real life” in her new “reality” television show, Ms. Richards professed to get out “the real story” in matters related to her turbulent life surrounding the breakup of her marriage with Sheen.

Is the show merely a publicity stunt? Is it sincere? Probably a bit of both. No matter. Whatever the motivation, Richards needs to fire the writer. Most enlightened onlookers understand that the new genre of “reality shows” are guided by loose scripts which provide the situations for the “reality.” In an early episode, Richards sat with a girl friend at a computer and “decides” to google her name, which can be scary business for pop stars these days. She discovers the epithet “hooker” attached to her name, then feigns disgust as she vamps it up saying, “I’m not too bad as a hooker.” She might be kidding, but she’s also putting the sex out there indicating that while she won’t be tainted, she minds not at all being a bit painted up. In any case, it turns out to be ill-fated shtick. (n. Yiddish for trick or gimmick).

As most pop culture fanatics know, Richards’ former husband, Charlie Sheen, cultivated a crop of prostitutes in not-so-earlier years, paying handsomely for his habits, but is now prudently on the mend. In not-so-recent years, he has not been known to happily pay out alimony to Ms. Richards. Thus, any connection between Mr. Sheen and his former wife cum prostitute would prove doubly an unhappy one.

The point was not missed by a pop culture reporter who picked up the ball and ran with it: “If she (Richards) were a hooker, Charlie Sheen wouldn’t have tried so hard not to pay her.”