It’s all over but the hand-wringing, now that reality TV “star” Markice Kesan Moore has turned himself in to the Cobb County, Georgia Sheriff’s Office to face child-cruelty charges stemming from an Aug. 1 incident in the town of Smyrna.
Last week the department had issued a “most-wanted” bulletin bearing the photograph of an incongruously smiling Moore, along with the charge that he was “accused of returning his infant daughter to her mother with multiple broken bones including, both, arms, one leg, three ribs, a collar bone and bruising all over her body.”
A spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office in Marietta told TheWrap that it Moore, 23, who had not yet been processed in the county jail, faced a $20,000 bond for the charges.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. For the boyish-voiced Moore, his appearance on MTV’s "From G’s to Gents" show, in which young urban louts become gentlemen, Pygmalion-style, offered entry into larger opportunities to showcase his musical chops and entrepreneurial skills. But he was voted off midway during Season One and seemed to fade into post-reality TV oblivion.
According to IMDB, Moore was able to land a few bit acting parts, including an ill-fated Tyler Perry TV show "Meet the Browns" and as Student No. 2 on an yet-unreleased feature film called "Blood Done Sign My Name."
Then came the startling news of his arrest warrant issued by the Smyrna Police Dept. and, today, his denial to TMZ, of the charges.
Nearly every week it seems as though some personality who has appeared on a reality TV show has been caught up in a bar fight, domestic disturbance or DUI in that fake-believe world to which they return after their episode or series ends. Invariably the individual is described as a “star,” even though the chances are that most people in the United States are unaware of his or her existence.
MTV’s “Jersey Shore” has its cast members throwing punches or getting punched – on and off camera; MTV’s “Teen Mom” star Farrah Abraham’s mother is arrested for choking 18-year-old Farrah at home; and Tila Tequila (of yet another MTV show, “A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila”), who’s half-life of celebrity got recharged by the death of friend Casey Johnson, has made such a publicity-seeking ass of herself in the wake of Johnson’s death that Tequila’s publicist has quit – apparently feeling there’s no need for her duties.
Juicy bad behavior such as this makes the “reality” stuff pale by comparison. Perhaps the genre will evolve to a point where the taping is just a ruse to follow the louts — uh, stars — to their after-hours shenanigans.
