Maureen, don’t spoil the act
Ms. Maureen Callahan at the New York post seems to have struck a nerve and become somewhat of a villainess for her article “Fairytale Ending: Why is no one suspicious of Simon Cowell’s latest creation?” criticizing the Suzan Boyle YouTube phenomenon. Someone should have pulled Maureen aside and whispered to her that writing this article is tantamount to standing up in a WWE wrestling event and shouting “IT’S FAKE!” Yes Maureen, deep down inside we all know it’s a show but we want to maintain the facade that it’s real. What you’ve gone and done is burst that facade and a lot of people are very angry with you. People (especially in a down economy) want to believe in a fairytale and acknowledging the fact that it was less accidental than a calculated stunt sort of ruins it for people.
The reality is that I don’t know if Mr. Cowell was aware of Ms. Boyle’s talent level or not. I would think that the acting surprised part for the judges would be easier if they haven’t heard or seen the contestants before. What probably happened is that Mr. Cowell simply instructed his production team to find interesting contestants especially if it’s a good fairy tail story out of the available pool of sincere contestants. Ms. Boyle certainly qualifies as extremely interesting because of the large disparity between her visual apperance and musical talents and that was likely the reason she was selected to go on the show. However, she has had to earn her new found fame with the performance that she gave and everyone is rightfully happy for her.
If you’ve watched the show before, you know that this is a reoccurring theme where the judges and audience willingly heckle the contestant and perform a 180 degree turn when the contestant shocks them with talent. That simply makes for good entertainment just like the audience at a professional wrestling event play along with the act while being in on the whole thing.
Maureen, we’re all performers on TV or print. I would even wager that you probably weighed the risk of backlash in your story with the insane number of page views you got from the DrudgeReport. Heck, you even got me to go off topic and link to you so you’re doing something right. The problem is that you’re being somewhat hypocritical.
The press loves to do this. They introduce this new hero to the world, be it sports or any venue. After a while, some one has to come along and "kill" the person with some dirt filled story about how flawed the person is. Whether Michael Phelps be t0king it up, Cramer screaming the ‘N’ word, or any one else who screws up and steps outside the line of what we consider normal of society, some one has to claim how horrible they are.
The best stories are the articles that get people all stirred up and start the gossiping buzz and people end up being hypocritical about the person. One instance of a person griping about Mel Gibson and then later spinning of blame about Jews.
Case in point, everything you do is average unless you are famous and then anything you do which is negative to the family is considered the worst crime against humanity. I don’t expect the rich and famous to be role models.
Maureen is just trying to do her job and get attention. Granted, I think that is normally the primary focus of the media. What should be the primary focus of the media is being informative to the audience. She doesn’t really have anything informative in the article though. She is simply speculating.
In that case, I think that AMD is not finish, but merely limping along until some one better comes along to plow them under, which may very well be Via.