Starving for Idol

Apparently there is a young girl who is on a hunger strike until that Sunjaya fella from American Idol gets voted off. I have not taken the time to look up this girl on YouTube where I understand you can see video of her explaining why she is so wrapped up in the most ridiculous television show in history (and yes, I am considering both The Gong Show and The Love Boat) that she feels the need to nearly kill herself. She is at something like day eleven and has not eaten a thing in all that time but she is keeping herself hydrated. She says if you want to save her all you need to do is vote for anyone who is not Sunjaya.

Right there is one of the fundamental problems with that show. There is, apparently, a movement afoot to keep this guy on the show and even crown him this season's idol just because he is so bad. I guess, in some way, that would prove my point, but it is still not a movement I can get behind. I would like to start a movement where everyone gets together and reads a book or watches a movie or perhaps form a group where we all pick some other television show and throw our full support behind it at whatever time American Idol is on. Just because you are keeping the guy on will not stop Idol from being there. It still means you are watching it and as long as that dreck gets ratings it will continue to be on the air.

What bothers me most about this story is the fact that you know there are people who will now continue to vote for Sunjaya just to see if this person starves herself to death. People these days have become very cruel and I blame, in part, American Idol. Some of the most popular shows are those first episodes where the worst of the worst are ushered before the cameras, like lambs to a slaughter, and publicly eviscerated for our entertainment. You just wouldn't do this in any other setting and, if you would, then you have a very serious problem. These people should be kindly taken aside and have their faults and flaws calmly explained to them instead of being dragged before the T-Shirt wearing monster known as Simon Cowell. I don't care how many people try to tell me that they ask for the beating they get. No one deserves it. If a guy is being obnoxious at a party and someone walks up and stabs him in the neck the judge is not going to set that person free just because the guy deserved to be stabbed in the neck. We should be more compassionate than that.

Watching people suffer has become entertainment in our society. We may not have a Coliseum but in this day and age we don't need one. The Roman Empire fell as the people in Rome became more and more debauched and willing to watch other peopler suffer. As the people began to care less and less for their fellow man or began to see their suffering and dying as entertainment the morals of the entire empire sank and the empire fell. Sure, there were other factors and that statement is an over-simplification but it certainly was a contributing factor.

Just look at the horror movies that come out these days. At one time,when I was younger, I loved to watch horror movies. I loved watching Michael Myers doing his thing to teenagers having sex in places they shouldn't. Jason did the same thing and then Freddy came along and added a bizarre sense of humor to the whole thing. They were scary (at least at first in all three cases) but they also seemed to be winking at the camera. It wasn't meant to be anything more than a movie. Now the movies you see are these torture films where the victims are strapped to chairs and having their eyeballs ripped out slowly. What can be fun about that? I remember when I first saw the preview for the movie "Saw" and I thought the concept sounded interesting. I never saw any of those movies but I have heard about them and they do not interest me. Give me a good werewolf story and I am happy even if it stars Christina Ricci and that guy from "Dawson's Creek."

Just last week a bunch of people on the chat program known as PalTalk watched a man hang himself in his home. He was in one of the many insult rooms that exist on PalTalk. These are rooms you go into just to be insulted. I do not understand the appeal of that but there seem to be enough of them on PalTalk that I can only guess enough people do find that entertaining. This guy said he was going to kill himself and people egged him on even as he stood on a chair and put the rope over his head. Apparently some understood what they were seeing and tried to talk him down and some started trying to find out where the guy lived so authorities could be called but there were certainly enough people continuing to tease him and tell him he wasn't doing it right and that he was taking too long. Well, now a very troubled man is dead and his kids are without a father.

Everything has become entertainment. People suffering has become entertainment. I admit to occasionally watching the show "Breaking Bonaduce" where the former child star Danny Bonaduce essentially self-destructs every episode and time and again throughout the run of the show. It is compelling television and you wonder if he is going to save his marriage. The lines between reality and fiction blur there and I confess to sometimes forgetting I am watching what is supposed to be reality and that a real marriage may be on the rocks and a real divorce could happen at any time.

So, you just know there are people who are going to deliberately keep this Sunjaya guy on American Idol just to see if this girl continues her hunger strike. They will want to watch as she continues to lose weight and starve herself. They will make jokes that she could stand to lose a few pounds anyway so it's a good thing she's doing this and that everyone should continue to keep Sunjaya on the show until she has shrunk to some acceptable weight.

It's rather sad to me that people would do that, but you know there are people who are going to. We no longer care about each other and we wonder why the world is as crazy as it is. We have the nerve to wonder why a teenager who is pregnant will give birth to the baby, cut the cord in the bathroom of the school and then leave the baby to die in a toilet or garbage can. Why? I'll tell you why because we no longer teach that we are supposed to care about each other. It is considered weak or something to care about someone in pain. If a man cries on television he is raked over the coals for weeks on talk radio shows for being a wimp. Apparently we are supposed to be emotionless robots and not care or show we care about anything or anyone.

American Idol is a great example of that. Never has a nation been so unified in publicly humiliating people. We love to laugh at the guy with the weird eyes singing and laugh loudly and applaud as Simon makes fun of his face and compares him to some kind of animal. Are we not entertained? Did Fox not win another night in the ratings race? Did the advertisers not get their money's worth? Well, then whatever humiliation or emotional damage was done it was all worth it, right? Why should we are about a guy who looks funny and can't really sing? He asked for it, didn't he? Shouldn't he be raked over the coals, humiliated, put down and laughed at? Of course he should because he went on the show and he asked for it by doing so.

If a guy is standing on a bridge and you encourage him to jump and he does you can be prosecuted. People who stood in the street while a guys stood on a ledge above encouraging him to jump were. You cannot encourage someone to kill themselves. That is considered a crime, at least in this country. The fact that it happens is just sad.

We live in a world where we can be instantly connected to hundreds, perhaps thousands, of other people in an instant. So anyone who wants to make a spectacle out of his or herself can almost instantly. We also live in a world where twenty-four hour news channels have to fill those twenty-four hours or else risk losing viewers and so they have to fill it with anything. So the guy who walks into a school or a bus station or a shopping mall with a gun gets twenty-four hour coverage and instant fame and notoriety. A sad former model who dies rather pathetically gets so much coverage you would think she was the leader of a major political movement. We live in a tabloid world looking for constant tabloid stories and in a world where we have all become vultures living off of the carrion that society is leaving behind. If it bleeds it leads and if it stops bleeding them just make something else bleed.

I don't know what can be done to stop any of this. The world watched September 11, 2001 happen live and in person and yet the world still continues to applaud and admire cruelty. Sometimes I think global warming is a good thing because more of us need to be wiped off the planet just because so many of us have forfeited our right to still be here. Don't worry though, if that happens, you'll get to see it all happen live right there on your television. Maybe you'll even get to vote for who survives and who dies.

Bryan W. Alaspa's novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.