Territorial Bloggings

Let’s start with some words from big sis, shall we?

“I think that was a terrible thing they did last night to Jordin and to all of the fans. They must have known that the show by itself wouldn’t keep peoples attention the full 2hrs. so they started out with the tease of the “most shocking AI results in history”.”

Big sis speaks with much wisdom — you can see where I learned it from!

And let’s get this out of the way toot sweet/tout de suite: any money that got raised & actually gets through to better the lives of folks who truly need it is a good thing. I refuse to get drawn into a debate morass about the root causes of the disease & poverty (both here & in Africa), about the best ways to address those root causes, about how to best help those whose own leaders don’t seem to want them to be helped, and/or about the theological implications that must come to bear but that so many wish to ignore. I’ll just leave it at this: we live in a sinful world, and helping those less fortunate than us is a good & right thing.

Idol Gives Back, however, just about broke my cynical-o-meter. I mean, even Sally Struthers had to have said “Damn! They’re sure laying on the guilt with a big ol trowel!” Even Starvin’ Marvin & Cartman would’ve felt bad.

Several commentators in the blogosphere have observed that even the huge (to you & me) amounts of money that FOX is throwing around are mere drops in the bucket compared to what they generate on a weekly basis, even without the charity angle. It’s been posited that FOX will actually see a huge upsurge in advertising revenue, such that the charity money is just a pleasant, shall we say, happenstance. And, while I certainly commend Ellen Degeneres for stepping up & giving $100,000 I also have to point out that it’s not that much of a sacrifice for her. If she still makes the $15,000,000 that she made in 2003, then that would be the equivalent of someone who makes $50,000/yr pledging $333.33 — IOW, she pledged .07% of her income, relatively speaking not all that much. Anyhoo, it’s just that looking at such types of relative comparisons tweak my cynical-o-meter — you know, things that make me go “Hmmmmm”, is all…

On the face of it, I don’t have a problem with the fact that there was no elimination last night, and the this week’s elimination was deferred until next week, when we get a Trumpian double “firing”. I just wish they would’ve done it without the faux (and flat out dishonest) announcement about the “MOST. SHOCKING. RESULTS. EVER!“ A non-elimination is not an elimination. And the lack of results is certainly not the most shocking results ever. They lied. And in the process, they tortured poor Jordin.

I did find it interesting, however, that they ended up wanting us to believe that the “M.S.R.E!“ would result in Jordin’s elimination, not Mindy-Doo’s. Somehow, I think that the producers have twigged to the fact that while Jordin doesn’t need to win the contest in order to “win” a credible career, AI most certainly needs Jordin to win if the franchise wants to salvage any real credibility as a finder/creator of true pop-stars. The AI franchise needs Jordin to win in order to stay relevant. It’s just that simple. That being the case, they’d better start being nicer to her, else she’ll take leave of them even more than Kelly has.

I’ll close with this: Bono is a mensch. He’s a Christian who truly gets what it means to work through your vocation in order to server your neighbor. The stuff we do isn’t meant for God (come on, now, what could we ever offer God? Nothing. He loves us so that we can love Him by serving others. We are instruments of His divine love.). No, our works & actions are best viewed as ways in which God uses us to serve our neighbors. Bono gets that. Bono lives that. Bono is a better example of what it means to be & live under God’s grace than Rick Warren/Jerry Fallwell/me/etc… could ever hope to be.

-ghp