Why I don’t watch ‘Idol’ any more
I imagine Simon Cowell is playing to the camera now and my impression in passing is the same as Rod Dreher’s: the cruelty has been stepped up. Before this Simon was simply blunt but honest: if he didn’t think you had talent he said so. When the ‘Idol’ phenom began Sir George Martin* said the same thing as Dreher now.

Update: Some facts from an old acquaintance. It’s crueller than I thought!

For those of you unaware, there is an intensive screening process by which competitors audition for producers in two rounds of tryouts prior to even getting to sing in front of the ‘American Idol’ judges some two months later (they compress it to make it look like it's all happening within forty-eight hours). It’s fair to speculate that those people who make the third round of auditions are being led to believe they have enough talent to make the third cut, and, potentially, land a spot as a contestant.

Apparently, the morbid fascination with the truly talentless, sometimes arrogant, and usually oblivious persons who should be doing anything but singing — a staple of all previous seasons — was wearing thin enough for ‘American Idol’... to raise their game...

Don’t get me wrong: if someone can’t sing, they should be told they do not qualify for the job (many of us are often left wondering exactly who is telling some of these folks they can, in fact, sing)! But is it fair to ‘set up’ people... for the purpose of making what the media defines as ‘good TV’?

*I dare say more people remember the Beatles than Curiosity Killed the Cat!