‘Married ay America’ Participant Already Married!

In a shock to television viewers around the globe, it was discovered earlier this week that Fox background checkers had screwed up. Again. Yeah, that was sarcasm.

It would seem fairly obvious that if you wanted to participate on the show Married by America, you would first need to be, well, unmarried. Apparently, Denise L., one of the five women who made it past the weeding out process on Monday’s show to vie for the audience vote in an attempt to marry Stephen, somehow missed this little fact.

The rules of Married by America apparently stipulate that participants should not have been married before. Well, not only was Denise married before, but she is still married currently! Reports indicate that she is separated at least, but not actually divorced.

It all came to light when the sister of the man Denise is married to called a radio station on Tuesday to tell them her story. Entertainment Tonight then picked up the story and broke it to a national audience. Even Fox has admitted to it now, and they said the situation will be dealt with on Monday’s show, though they aren’t saying how. If the vote went against Denise L., it should be simple enough. But if it went for her, things will be trickier as simply removing Denise L. means America actually had no say in the process.

Wouldn’t it have been better to deal with it before the show premiered by having decent background checkers? Denise L. was even the one woman in her group for whom a “secret” was revealed to the judges. In her case, the secret was that she had appeared in Playboy. That’s nothing compared to the real secret!

Ironically, when she first introduced herself to the audience on the show, RealityNewsOnline writer C. Brian Devinney summed it up as: “Denise L., 31. A former bull rider. She says she's fearless and a wild ‘flower.’ Um okay. The big boobs and the hat from the Joe Millionaire Mojo Collection are turning me off. She also expect America to hook her up with a ‘wild man’ and a ‘fearless man.’ Denise, you only get one man.” Apparently, Brian was wrong about that “one man” part.

Later, Denise was asked, along with the other women vying to be hitched to Stephen, what the most selfish thing was that they have done in a relationship. Denise answered that she is a workaholic and spends less time with her man than she should. Um, perhaps that’s because she and “her man” are separated! Then, in the individual question, we found out that she was kicked out of the house when she was 16 but supported herself and stayed in school – what did it teach her? She said she learned to be independent and not rely on a man to do anything for her. Well, that certainly hasn’t changed. She also said both the man and woman need to give to the relationship. She sounds like an expert…

Another amusing side note is that Fox has sequestered all of the show’s participants. They are not allowed to watch TV or read newspaper, and only to have monitored phone calls, etc. So it’s quite possible that she doesn’t even know she’s been busted! I wouldn’t put it past Fox to try to boost ratings on this show (which have been fairly low in the first two episodes) by revealing to her live on the show that she has been disqualified and explaining why.

You know, it’s almost enough to make you wonder if poor background checking is part of the Fox plan. Temptation Island had Ytossie and Taheed, who had violated the rules by having a child and not telling the producers about it; Joe Millionaire had Sarah the bondage queen; American Idol producers featured Frenchie heavily in early shows and then dumped her a couple weeks into the semi-final round for having posed on a porn site – even though they knew about it much earlier; etc. Is scandal a new ratings ploy? Or are Fox’s background checkers just still incompetent?

David Bloomberg is the Editor of RealityNewsOnline and can be reached at rno@pobox.com.

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