American Idiot
Today ABC News and myriad other sources are asking if Fox's American Idol is "too mean."
"You look like one of those creatures that live in the woods with those massive eyes," infamous judge Simon Cowell told one "Idol" hopeful.
That's not that mean. These people got their 15 seconds of fame -- what more were they expecting? "American Karaoke" is probably the most insipid program in the history of American television, and I'm only being somewhat facetious in saying that, as Fox has certainly lowered the bar on numerous occasions... but the fact that nearly a third of American televisions were tuned in to the show's season premiere leads me to a handful of conclusions.
1. Americans like smack talk.
Americans have consistently proven ourselves to be increasingly milquetoasty, letting their words speak for what used to be their fists. Americans love the smack. Need proof? Let's see how many blog postings have been covering the increasingly-ugly love affair between Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell:
10,370 according to Technorati. Yes, a human being at some point wrote up the smack being tossed between the two huge losers more then TEN THOUSAND TIMES.
Americans love smack. They love heckling, too, as I found out during my weekly Tuesday night performance at the Hangout.
I had just finished my paean to a divorced woman with kids, Kid Things.
"Are you done?" a drunk man asked from across the room.
"When's Darryl coming back," asked an even more drunk woman sitting near me. (Darryl being the guy who I sit in for when he takes a smoke break.)
I asked drunk man if he would like to play.
"I don't know how to play."
"They what makes you such a f*ckin' expert?" I retorted, and then improvised a song to impress the brunette Croatian girl whom I was hitting on despite her being on a date, with a guy, who was sitting right there. My song expounded upon how much greater Macedonia, my homeland, is compared to Croatia. I don't quite recall the lyrics, though I do remember saying something like:
"In Macedonia we roast our lamb in hot lard,
In Croatia you find Drazen Petrovic in your yard"
...or something similarly uncouth. Oh, I was making a point here.
2. Americans love to see people more pathetic than them.
I am not saying Americans are pathetic; rather, I think we happen to be freakin' awesome. However, I think that the American television-viewing public perceives themselves to be pathetic. Thus, being exposed to even bigger losers than we think ourselves to be is, by reference, a self-esteem boost. It's my assumption that people use programs in which other humans are degraded as a kind of visual Prozac, and perhaps a bit of coke or speed too. (Americans love drugs, remember? We invented all the cool ones.)
Seriously, it blows my mind why people would rot their brains with such tripe when they could simply go to their local club on karaoke night and see people equally-as-talented and equally-as-rotten go at it, and with a smoky room (except in Ohio) to boot! After all, no matter whether it's the opening week or the final round of Idol, you're never going to see anything as entertaining as a dude channeling Joe Cocker.
Yeeeeeeah, okay, that was pretty unwatchable. But, hey, it encapsulates of what my last night consisted.
