Ours is an age of unreality cloaked in apparent realism. Television, of course, is saturated with reality shows, demonstrating, if nothing else, our estrangement from language and meaning. Your housewives of Jersey, your small town security guards, even people who operate storage facilities. I don't believe there have been any shows centered on the lives coma patients. Yet. News broadcasts, both national and local, increasingly melding with those of entertainment, like some incestuous marriage destined to produce deranged kids, will sometimes let observers look in from a street-side window. Or the broadcast itself will take us behind the scenes, perhaps bring its anchor out from behind the barrier - its fourth wall if you will - of the desk, or let a camera break free of it usual straight-on perspective and sweep around the studio (the narcissists at ESPN really enjoy this). Television commercials will revel in their outtakes - som...