The country is in shock, and rightfully so. Many people believe a conspiracy is taking place, and President Bush’s speech two weeks ago only aggravated them more. Thankfully, the news coverage is expansive, and the people are once again speaking out, demanding a recount. This is the America I love. The one that questions the decisions made by others. The one that voices its discontent for the outcome of an election. The people are finally rising up in anger and demanding to be heard, and what they are saying is “Jennifer Hudson shouldn’t have been kicked off ‘American Idol!’”
Now, I’m not a big fan of “American Idol,” so I wouldn’t know if Jennifer Hudson might be the next Whitney Houston. But what I do know is how upset America is that she was kicked off, because I’ve seen the story so much in the news. Conspiracy theorists have even circulated rumors of hackers breaking into the system and altering the votes. Another factor that supposedly led to Hudson’s elimination was a power outage in her hometown of Chicago. The outage left 15,000 people unable to watch or vote for her, but which is the real tragedy? Fifteen thousand people without power or 15,000 people unable to watch “American Idol”?
What is going on in the United States? On April 13, President Bush scheduled a news conference, causing Fox to push “American Idol” to the following night. The next morning on the radio, I heard more about the public’s disappointment in the show’s rescheduling than I heard about the president’s comments! Bush answered questions in the conference about the embattled Aug. 6, 2001 briefing that discussed terror threats, an important political issue item in recent weeks. But did America care? Not really. Instead they felt tricked, because they hoped to turn on their television and find Paula Abdul, but instead got the leader of their country.
People love watching “American Idol,” because it gives them the ability to make someone a celebrity — and doesn’t everyone long to be famous themselves? Television is filled with shows like VH1’s “The Fabulous Life,” which showcases their pimped-out cars and calculates how many Louis Vuitton bags Jennifer Lopez could buy with her last paycheck. Even A&E’s “Biography,” which used to tell the stories of historic figures, has graduated to talking almost exclusively about celebrities. For the month of April, David Koresh is the only non-celebrity being featured.
So our country enjoys hearing about the private lives of pretty people. Big deal, right? The problem is that this phenomenon is slowly seeping into our political system. We elected a professional wrestler to govern a state and now have extended the title to an action hero. Although Arnold may have some good political views, I wonder if this trend of electing inexperienced celebrities into office will continue.
If celebrities themselves don’t run, they are always there to support their favorite candidate. Celebrity endorsements have become more important than ever as candidates fight for coverage in the press. Personally, the political opinion of someone who starred in “A Pyromaniac’s Love Story” doesn’t mean much to me, but who knows what his appearance did to sway the votes of “Backdraft” fans.
Celebrity political intervention even extends overseas. Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are trying to stop the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in between movies and magazine shoots. That’s really sweet, but maybe they should try just sticking to their day jobs. Celebrities need to wake up and realize being Hollywood royalty doesn’t grant them ambassadorial powers, and Americans need to vote because of their own feelings on the issues, not because of the opinions of a good romantic comedy’s star.
Just imagine if we all talked about world politics as much as we do celebrities or watched as much news as we do reality shows. Maybe then we would all start to be educated about the issues and actually begin to make progress on the problems affecting our country. Maybe if we made it as easy to vote for the presidency as it is for “American Idol,” people would actually vote. Until then, I will go to sleep every night hoping when I wake up the phrase “Diddy Runs the City” still refers to his participation in the Boston Marathon. Cross your fingers, America, and maybe once in a while turn off your televisions.