love
- on 04.16.08
- World
on the way to work this morning, NPR’s 7:50 am story was about the phenomenon that is American Idol. 27 million viewers. The reporter took to the public to try to discern the source of its popularity. Kids like it because there is “pretty singing”, and “Simon is mean and they can laugh when people mess up”. A professor theorized on the hormonal responses to getting all googly-eyed over a heartthrob in the making.
What really made an impression to me, was the graduate student whose thesis work proposes that American Idol is a form of a secular ritual which represents a source of democracy that is responding to the shaky politics of the last 8 years in particular. The contested election in 2000, the questionable Ohio issue in 2004, and this year’s primary elections in the Democratic Party.
“We are in this crisis of democracy,” Williams says, “and since democracy is such an important part of our cultural identity, maybe American Idol provides another way for us to express ourselves democratically.”
This secular ritual, placates our need to feel that we can make a difference in making or breaking a person’s career. Uplifting them from normalcy, everyday life, into pop stardom.
Either way, this image seemed to provoke my thoughts on the story. Not quite related. Maybe this post should be titled “Tolerance” but the message is clearly, love.
Read the article on NPR.com
I bike to work daily in the lovely city of Portland, OR where I 
Wouldn’t be fantastic if the American people got as excited about our political election process? Unfortunately, we just don’t have same sense of ownership or control over the outcome.
Right on Wren, I do agree that the political process needs some involvement. Unfortunately this discussion hilights a major impediment to our truly democratic process and that is the control our networks have in shaping public sentiment. I hear more often of movie stars and musicians endorsing politicians and less of philosophers and great thinkers. What does Chuck Norris know about politics? It seems we’ve grown accustomed to someone else doing the programming for us- and that doesn’t bode well for democracy.