I have seen only one episode of American Idol and that was during its first year of production. I was not impressed! But then again, watching plainly untalented people make fools of themselves (intentionally or not) is not my idea of entertainment.
(“Paul Abdul making booty calls on American Idol,” The iPINIONS Journal, May 5, 2006)
As this quote indicates, I find little redeeming value in American Idol. Therefore, when its star Simon Cowell left to launch The X Factor, I thought that made about as much sense as Donald Trump leaving the farcical Celebrity Apprentice to launch a spinoff of his own.
This is why I don’t mind expressing unbridled schadenfreude at the growing pains Cowell is suffering with his new show. Pains, incidentally, that were highlighted when he fired his highly touted muse, Paula Abdul, a few weeks ago … after just one season.
Yet nothing indicates how desperate Cowell is to make The X Factor relevant quite like him exploiting Whitney Houston’s death by suggesting that he was in talks with her to replace Paula. Not to mention contrived leaks about him paying Beyoncé $500 million (or paying Elton John half as much) to join his show, which would amount in both cases to nothing more than putting lipstick on a pig.
In any event, I hope Cowell’s troubles prove contagious, and that plummeting ratings cause these no-talent shows to go the way of daytime soap operas. After all, it’s a cultural shame that these and other reality-TV programs like The Jersey Shore and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills did not jump the shark after just one season.
Meanwhile, apropos of exploiting no-talented fools, reports are that Bobbi Kristina is being groomed to follow in her mother’s footsteps.
But if you’ve seen this kid’s croaking (drug-induced?) rendition of Adele’s Someone Like You on YouTube, you know that the only footsteps she can follow in are those Whitney took during her final years; that is, when drugs and booze caused a permanent frog to become lodged in her throat. And we all know how awful and sad that made her sound….
Frankly, instead of grooming Bobbi Kristina to put her on stage, her loved ones should be staging an intervention to put her in rehab.
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Paula booty calls…