Of course the American broadcast media have reached a new low with “Joe Millionaire.” I mean, it’s obvious. The show displays our society at its worst. It’s trashy. It’s mind-numbing. It’s … it’s … it’s …

I can’t believe he didn’t dump that shallow ditz Melissa! I mean, seriously. Joe asks her what she would do if she were suddenly a millionaire, and she says: “I’d like to go to a third-world country and bathe their children and give shots. But that’s me, I’m a mercenary kind of person. You know?”

Umm, no. Nevermind the fact that there’s nothing stopping her from joining an overseas charity organization now, or that bathing children is not exactly the primary task of these volunteers. But she’s a “mercenary kind of person?” What, is she going to bathe the children in arsenic? Put strychnine in those syringes? Maybe she would encounter some complications in trying to volunteer, after all.

OK, so I’m hooked. I know as a member of the print media I am supposed to bemoan the latest trashification of television. I should probably deride Fox for airing what is surely the first instance of oral sex on network TV, complete with audio and subtitles like “slurp,” if less than graphically depicted. And I should certainly get after those millions of viewers who serve to create the hype around this garbage.

But I can’t. I am one of those millions of witnesses to Sarah’s drunken dive, catfights over evening gowns, and the bully tactics of three girls toward the shy and sweet Zora.

And I don’t feel the least bit guilty about it. Neither should you. Let me tell you why.

If one watches intently enough, the show reveals three great truths of modern American culture. They all represent fairly serious breaks with the culture of our grandparents, and none are truly original — people have been writing about them for the last decade or two. But “Joe Millionaire” hands these writers a whole new arsenal to make their case.

Truth #1: The line between “people who know what they want” and selfish materialists is determined by the art of B.S.

Behind closed doors, Melissa talks strategy with Sarah about how to steal away “Prince Evan” and his millions. To his face, she talks about her “mercenary” ambitions in the third world. MoJo, on the other hand, shows Joe a check she wrote to herself for a million dollars — a sort of symbolic goal setting in her quest for wealth. Guess which woman got a ruby and which one got sent packing.

Americans worship wealth today much more than, say, 40 years ago. This is not news. But our culture today more than ever requires the money-mongers to pay lip service to less materialistic aims. Melissa’s lie that she wanted to be a millionaire so that she could have the resources to help the downtrodden (Bush’s trickle-down tax cuts in a nutshell) is far more palatable than MoJo’s unveiled ambition of wealth.

Truth #2: How are so many people getting together? In the words of Jerry Seinfeld, “Alcohol.”

There is no coincidence that the most serious, uh, romancing in both “Joe Millionaire” and “The Bachelorette” comes to fruition only after some serious drinking. Fewer and fewer couples can say their first kiss did not have a bit of an alcoholic taste, and it’s not simply because more people are drinking — it’s a sign of the changing sexual relations of the last 50 years.

Women’s rights and feminist movements have accomplished great things, but facilitating a first kiss is not one of them. On heterosexual dates, most women still expect men to make the first move, while men are increasingly afraid to make an unsolicited advance. So that leaves us guys trying to pick up on the subtleties of womanese (which our military could use as an unbreakable code against any opposing force made up entirely of males), while women try to make their intentions clear in their language without stepping into ours. Obviously and unfortunately, it’s much easier to just have a few more drinks and make out in public (or, in Joe’s case, go further in front of several million).

Truth #3: This country’s kids grow up way too pampered.

When Joe decided to take the women to pick grapes, ride horses and move some hay in the second episode, the amount of bitching would lead one to think they had all grown up in British royalty. In the third episode, Alison complained that Joe wasn’t “sophisticated” enough because he thought twice about stuffing his mouth full of some kind of animal liver. And, in the most recent installment, he cooks dinner with resident space-cadet Melissa. “Oh, this is garlic!” she exclaims. Joe walks over and assesses her discovery: “Those are onions.”

In the back of our minds, we all know we live in a culture falling increasingly into crass materialism, anxious sexuality and the outsourcing of traditional household duties. But “Joe Millionaire” brings them all screeching back to the forefront. It’s not a guilty pleasure. It’s an anthropological study.

That’s what I’ll tell myself next Monday night.

Matt Lynch ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in English and political science.