Many Americans cannot stomach even a single viewing of American Idol, and I can certainly understand why. Completely. It is mind bogglingly corporate; a music industry whore playing up the worst of American culture; the contestants are bafflingly ostentatious for the amount of talent they have to offer; the show goes into painstaking detail about the lives of the contestants, but to the best of my recollection I never asked for any of these details (because I do not care to know), and the end result is programming that has been bloated to, at times, 5+ hours a week of pure filler. Would you assholes shut up and SING, already?

Yet I cannot bring myself to turn away.

The reasons why are clear. Firstly, there are rare moments when a young singer actually impresses the shit out of me. But even more so, I cannot get enough of that dastardly Simon Cowell. He is a trend setter for modern television: the viscous, truth-telling judge of the talent show, intent on bringing down the façade of niceties that have caused such a glut of painfully pitiful products in the entertainment market. The difference between Cowell and the countless spin-offs he has inspired is that Simon seems to know what he is talking about. I don’t always agree with his opinion, but it always appears to come from a pragmatic place.

None of this is new, and many have said this before, to be sure. However, it is extraordinarily impressive—to me, at least—that after 7 seasons (we are currently in the 8th), Simon is still just as doggedly dedicated to clearing the crap out of the road as he was in the beginning (more below).

The beauty of the clip you just watched is this: a minutely talented (at best) and hugely annoying contestant gets the boot. Paula Abdul (the nice one) takes the time to carefully keep this borderline-retarded, show-tunes wannabe, punk-ass turd’s ego intact by propping him up with lies, and we watch Colton’s face as he beams at the news Paula gives him, only to have Simon dash it apart. I love it. Watch his face fall—and right in front of the guy’s parents, at that. It’s painfully beautiful. Although, to Colton’s credit, he takes the news well.

I love watching this kind of thing happen to Americans. If ever there was a group of people with a distorted sense of self, it is us. Our sense of entitlement has grown to grotesque proportions, and I only wish we had more straight-talking limeys to knock us down a few more pegs. I love this country, and I’d like for us to all forget about what horrible things we think Hillary is doing to it (OMG how weird that she has a Myspace page), and concentrate more on what the COLTON’s are doing to it.

“Why don’t you keep your opinions to yourself?” Paula asks.

“Then don’t ask me,” replies Cowell. Touché.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Movies and Television, The Soapbox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.