Britain's got Talent

Yesterday a friend sent me a link to a show called "Britain's got Talent" on UTube. The clip was of a nice woman who was appearing on the show, something like American Idol, I guess, since I don't watch those shows. My friend said to give her a listen. "She's great", he said. I listened. She was a fine singer and wowed the audience and the judges.

But! What caught my attention while I watched the eight minute clip, her beautiful voice notwithstanding, was the smarmy, arrogant attitude of the three judges and the audience. From the time the singer came on stage the three "Beautiful People," apparently the regular judges, along with the audience took one look at her rather plain appearance, heard her strong accent, and began snickering and whispering snide comments about her. To her credit she handled it well, ignoring the arrogant and rude behavior.

Then she began singing and the ugly mood changed, a little too much in my opinion. The camera man began focusing, closeup, on the faces of the judges, on many in the audience, as they dutifully acted amazed - surprised. A couple of them, I kid you not, pretended to be crying. It was a display of insincerity such as I've not seen since Bill Clinton pretended to be in tears over the death of Vince Foster. So, here were three judges, each thinking that they are surely the prettiest of them all, and an audience, obviously there to hoot, holler and denigrate anyone who walked onto that stage, and all now driven to tears by the woman's angelic voice. Like I said; insincerity taken to a new level.

Then, afterward, each of the judges expressed appropriate amazement and took the time to say more insincere things like, "We were all so against you before you sang. This has been such a wake up call for us." My Lord! A wake up call! How old are these people? Back when I was a kid I learned, "Don't judge a book by it's cover," and "Judge not - or you will be judged!" These nasty, small-minded little people, in their arrogance, seemed to relish being judgemental. The funny thing is; I never saw any of the three before. I don't have a clue as to who they are or why they have reason to act so superior, except, I will admit, they were pretty.

But I'll bet they felt great, admitting they were wrong in being against her and in initially judging her by her appearance. A liberal friend, and I don't have many of those, made a rare admission several years ago. He said, "We liberals like to judge people. That way we can feel badly afterward and, you have to understand, feeling badly about ourselves assures us that we are good. In fact, it assures us that we're nicer than most other people, who we actually hate."

My Lord! That's exactly what I watched on "Britain's got Talent" yesterday. The woman certainly had talent and I wish her great success. She deserves it. In fact, she deserved better than she got from those nasty people on that terrible show.


“Many people are arrogant about their own modesty”

Christopher Molineux