Once upon a time, many years ago, I suspect it was possible for someone to achieve something noteworthy and have people be happy for them. Take the case of Susan Boyle - where, for the most part, after her first appearance on "Britain's Got Talent" (BGT) there has been widespread acclaim for her performance. Post second-performance there appears to be a bit more narkiness - Lily Allen* tweeted about Boyle's performance not being that good, and there's now reports of Boyle blowing up at a couple of strangers who were "winding her up" - a British term for "making fun of". While it's not know what they said, a police officer's words to Boyle afterwards were recorded thus: You are in the public eye, you must learn to expect this sort of thing. Why? Used to be there was a saying something like "if you can't say something nice about a person, don't say anything at all" but that seems to have long gone by the wayside especially with the advent of "humiliation TV", including shows like the aforementioned BGT where there's usually one judge (of three) whose express purpose seems to be to make fun of and be rude to contestants. Is this the price for that 15 minutes of fame? And has the population at large become inured to it?
* I hadn't heard of her before but it appears she is a performer.
No comments:
Post a Comment