American Assholes

While there’s still room on the bandwagon I’ll say my piece about American Idol and Sanjaya, the lil’ Injun* who could.

I think you’re a moron if you idea of entertainment is a hackneyed “talent” competition where some average Joe gets retooled and marketed so that a formulaic set of tunes can be sold to all the fat secretaries in the Bible Belt, and teens can flock to the Mall Of The Americas for the most awesome display “musicianship” of in a food court since Tiffany and the New Kids. Clearly, you have bad taste in music. For six seasons, the lowest common denominator of musical showmanship has been showcased, yielding album after album of pop garbage that only differs in the packaging. The amalgam that passes for pop music these days is a sick blend of quasi-religiously underpinned, country tinged, half-ballad / half anthem, over-produced, inoffensive, ball-less, soulless crap that only a 8 year old should listen too because they don’t know any better.

Some people like to pass off their viewership on the “train-wreck” phenomena, as week after week of attention-starved losers make asses out of themselves for what is nowhere close to 15 minutes of Warholian shame, but with the internet and countless sites full of wacky pictures and videotaped stunts gone wrong, the bar is being set pretty low in terms of finding a chortle in their badness. If you’ve done some karaoke – and you really only need to once – you know that most people can’t sing, and it’s excruciatingly difficult to endure. So why would watching that on television be any different? Having these rejects from the Let’s Make A Deal audience wank about how they know they’re destined for greatness and that the judges are idiots afterwards is needlessly allowing them a televised platform to masturbate their over-inflated egos. That is how a retard (yes, with a clinically diminished IQ) like William Hung became anything different than the guy who has probably never touched a woman’s breast who works in your office as a file clerk…and it blows my mind. I want to punch these people in the throat so I never have to hear another off-key rendition of an already bad pop song.

Outside the ever-rotating cast of stock characters (the ghetto superstar, the one who’s sexy pictures show up online, the make-over, the All-American girl next door, the one with a trace of vocal ability), we have our lovable host and judges. I think that we’ve all figured out that Ryan Seacreast is gay (even though he hasn’t) and would only bat an eye if when he finally does come out, that it’s the most hardcore possible. Pyramid? Bukkake gangbang? If I don’t see a whole lot of leather and moustaches I’m going to be disappointed. Simon Cowell, our Bar Sinister, is the only voice of reason in a chorus of ass-kissing, but his boredom and snobby baiting twat attitude is stale and obvious. He’s like Sam Jackson in Deep Blue Sea – trying to make sense and rally the troops but ends up eaten by a shark – to our satisfaction.

Simon L. Jackson?

Prime talking head and the other injection of estrogen besides Seacrest, Ms. Paula Abdul is the living fate these competitors face. She’ll be back to appearances at car dealerships once the show goes off the air, but in the meantime, her slow self-destruction at the bottom of an alcohol soaked pillbox is her role. Finally, the one black guy less threatening and happier than Al Roker, Randy Jackson, is there because Journey once had a black bassist. That’s it. Everybody gets a gold star and a pat on the back from him, so it just makes sense that we need to be reminded of the years following Journey’s glory when half the band left.

After hearing of Sanjaya’s awfulness, I was initially happy to see that there was a movement afoot to sabotage the show and vote him into the finals. He was like Rasputin, surviving each attempt on his life. In bad teen comedies, this would be the moment where the protagonist ends up prom king / queen on what was a goof. However, in real life it’s not the triumphant victory of right over wrong. It’s not any victory. It’s scary. I’d seen that kind of pranksterism and misfortune before, the thinking that it would be a hoot to see what happens when you go with the worst possible choice – it’s called George W. Bush, and two terms of elevating the mediocre gave me pause. America continues to dumb down and gravitate towards the least logical choice, but accelerating the process is a bad idea. Let’s only hope he fades into (un)reality television obscurity, because it’s hard enough stomaching the thought that great entertainment like Arrested Development disappears yet According To Jim and Two And A Half Men will live forever.

Sanjaya, I hardly knew ye, thankfully…

*I know he’s the dot and not feather variety, so piss off