I don’t watch a lot of television, my family does and I am nearby so I get the secondhand dumbing down. The observations that one gets not involving themselves directly with the broadcast are very telling of just how much of a joke we are living in.
There is a show called America’s Got Talent. I have never seen the actual show, but one thing I have caught in the promos is a panel of 3 judges watch and rate would be Gong Show rejects. It is not the repackaging of an old concept that cracks me up it is the title of the show and the current judges. AMERICA’S Got TALENT yes, but in judging? Piers Morgan, Sharon Osborne and Howie Mandel are the judges this season. Piers and Sharon were both born in England and Howie is Canadian.
Is the panel a commentary on the fact that we have talent, but couldn’t find 3 people in America that could spot it? All 3 judges may be American citizens I am not sure of their status, I just find it funny. Then I remembered in past years David Hasselhoff was a judge, so I hit Google to see if he was too busy suddenly to be our homegrown representative of judging talent. Turns out he was “released” from his judging obligations by the network for showing a pattern of making poor decisions (judgments) in his personal life.
Are we good judges? Taylor Swift is one of the hottest recording acts going. No one points out she is tone deaf. Her songs are not unique in a world of unicorn rainbow covered 15 year old girls notebooks, where the prose often bends to the modern take on Cinderella. Avatar is the biggest movie ever, yet Ferngully gave a more complete and deeper take on the same message. The Twilight series is the biggest thing in print and with each release the most anticipated serial in the theatres, yet the books really kind of suck and the movies seem to be an excuse to make soft porn for 12 year old girls and 45 year old would be cougars aching to see some barely legal flesh. The two biggest movie releases of the past weekend were The Karate Kid and the A-Team. One a bad 80’s movie that was able to grab people’s hearts and added “wax on, wax off” to our philosophical lexicon, the other a bad 80’s television show. Maybe we do need judges from other places to steer us.
The next observation gave me a good take on the American automotive industry. An Acura commercial addressing the personal investment and statement one makes when entering the world of luxury cars. It reminded me of the birth of Acura, Lexus and Infiniti a couple of decades ago. It is like Honda, Toyota and Nissan collectively got together and said we make great cars and we offer affordability and dependability, but the upper class in America only buy European cars so they will never see us as a luxury product. What we must do is change our grills and taillights change the names of the cars, charge thousands of dollars more and we will be in the luxury market as well. All three companies are chugging right along. Mitsubishi did not go that route and the Mitsubishi dealerships are on decline. Isuzu did not do this and they have disappeared. Ford on the other hand knew through Mercury and Lincoln that they could not reproduce the dependability the luxury car market demands, so they bought Volvo, Rover, Jaguar, Aston Martin and set about dismantling what was right about those companies. In an apparent bid to not make a better product, just make everyone else’s worse. GM on the other hand had written the playbook that the triplets from the land of the rising sun were using and had been producing the same 4 of 5 vehicles under multiple brand names at different price points for years. Except without quality and dependability as an issue. To answer Ford’s acquisition frenzy GM bought Saab and reintroduced its European subsidiary Opel to our market. While Saab only had a niche market in America, GM managed to widen that market with a poorer quality product than Saab previously produced. GM used Opel to build the bigger and more reliable than before Saturns. Opel also designed the Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice two of the better looking things GM produced just before it shit canned both Pontiac and Saturn. A lack of critical thinking seems to be the cornerstone of our capitalism.
Reality television has owned television for the past decade, yet it seems one of the only shows that even gets close to reality is Parenthood. Actors in this show play characters faced with real life ups and downs you know…realistic stuff written by writers. I wonder if the writers are American?
Maybe there is no true social commentary here at all; maybe we are all just practicing God’s advice of judge not lest ye be judged.
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