The truth is, there are conservatives who enjoy Will & Grace and there are liberals who enjoy Seventh Heaven. There are black women who hate Oprah and middle-aged wives who scoff at Desperate Housewives. Families with both conservative and liberal members sit down and watch television every night without clobbering one another with their remotes.

Regardless of what we’re told to believe, our lives are not “red” or “blue” or even black or white, but shades of every color on the wheel. Yes, we have opinions, our country is at war, and, sadly, New Orleans is now a morgue. But our lives go on. We’re falling in love. We’re divorcing. We’re mowing our lawns. We’re doing homework. We’re having babies. We’re burying our parents. We’re overwhelmed. We’re bored. We’re having parties. We’re being raped. We’re born again. We’re drowning. And, yes, we’re watching TV.

If network execs would get back to the business of quality programming, focus more on what goes into a script than on what they think they have to take out, and stop playing dodgeball with every Chicken Little that says the sky is falling, we’d be talking about how provoked we are by programming, not how disappointed we are in it.

As much as I appreciate GLAAD’s difficult task in the face of volatility, as aware as I am of their efforts to work with and educate the studios and production companies on our behalf, something’s missing.

After learning that Fox's new crime drama Killer Instinct, which is set in San Francisco, features the rape and murder of a lesbian in the pilot episode, yet features no LGBT regulars to investigate crimes, GLAAD’s Damon Romine said, “It's a great disservice to the LGBT community when our only representation in the entire crime genre is as victim or villain.”

Ya think?

C’mon, let’s see some fire. Give us something to get behind!

Imagine if Fox announced a new show called Redneck City, set in Mississippi and featuring a group of sexy black lesbian cops who investigate a series of brutal rapes and lynchings of crooked, white, male, Christian politicians with ties to a senator. I doubt Trent Lott would respond by calmly saying, “It's a great disservice to the state of Mississippi…” The man might be homophobic nut, but he’s got passion.

And passion is what we’re missing.

We’re settling, folks. We’re settling for, of all things, reality programming—a genre that, frankly, makes us looks like idiots. We’re also allowing ourselves to be drowned out by a segment of the population that deserves the moniker “loud and proud” a lot more than we do these days.

While we might not quickly rein in those who want to police the airwaves, we can certainly let the networks know that we deserve better. And we can sure as heck get a grip on ourselves, especially with respect to what’s happening in our living rooms, and refuse to become casualties in a war in which everyone will, no doubt, end up dead—brain-dead, that is.

Kim Ficera is the author of Sex, Lies and Stereotypes: An Unconventional Life Uncensored. Her bi-weekly column Don't Quote Me is dedicated to all the folks in and out of Hollywood who talk without thinking or who don't know when to stop talking. Email her at kim@kimficera.com.