What Would Jesus Do On American Idol?

January 2006

What was I doing in Midland, Texas?

More importantly, what was I doing in Midland, Texas watching American Idol?

Well the answer to the first question is that I was on a work trip, but the second question may never be answered.

If there is a moral to American Idol, it is "don't even bother, leave it to the 'experts'", and it reaffirmed my growing paranoia(?) that absolutely nothing on TV is real.

I was reading in Lenny Bruce's autobiography about how he worked for one of those early game shows where even though the "grand prize" was supposed to be thousands of dollars, the "contestants" just received $25 a day and went home with nothing, "win" or "lose". You make more money (even accounting 50s dollars vs 00s dollars) getting on Jerry Springer.

Look hard enough, you can find the politics in everything. Even in a show that celebrates the crushing of dreams, the producers must have taken perverse pleasure in bringing out two aspiring businessmen; one an entrepreneur, one an inventor. They spent an uncomfortable amount of time watching the first consistently mispronounce the name and motto of his own company several times, and the latter describe over and over what was an admittedly simple device.

"You're useless, I'm bored." said Simon to the latter, and told the former that there "would be no next time". Leave it to the experts indeed. Not only are your dreams of stardom stupid, but your other ideas and plans as well.

I'm admittedly pretty cynical, but even my skepticism was thrown for a loop by the cowboy. I thought to God I had hallucinated the whole absurd fucking thing, if someone hadn't mentioned it the next day.

C'mon now. Goddamn.

He lives in a "town with only four people" but his family has FIVE people! Feral animals have more human interaction than you'd infer he had from his back story. How did he find out about the contest? And notice he's the only one they had footage of from his ranch home.

C'mon now. Goddamn.

And they're gonna coach Feral Cowboy McChucklehead through his audition and tell him he can make it to the next level if he gets a vocal coach (which will, coincidentally, be a hidden "sixth" occupant of his four person village, I'm sure). The thought that there is anyone in the world that takes any of this crap seriously is absurd. Like "Please God tell me I'm still asleep or on drugs" kind of absurd.

And then, to cap it all off, I had an epiphany about God. Or rather about Jesus.

Specifically, how he talks about "not being of this world", and about people like him who are also "not of this world", and all about "rejecting the world" and such. What if he's not talking about sin? What if he's talking about the completely ludicrous nature of politics and pop?

When you see how the constant court battles of Marilyn Manson sound exactly like the court battles of Lenny Bruce 50 years before which sound like the battles of Oscar Wilde 50 years before which sound like the court battles of Aaron Burr 50 years before which sound like the same troubles suffered by Diogenes and Aleister Crowley and Voltaire and Giordano Bruno and De Sade and Socrates and even Jesus. The world devouring those that "are not of it".

Aleister Crowley believed that this condition of "not being of the world" was actually the potential for genius. I am inclined to agree.