Jumping Through Hoops

The French, Greek and Germany's North Rhine Westphalia election results are threatening seismic upheavals in Europe's political landscape, JP Morgan bank is reeling from huge financial losses, the Eurozone is teetering on the verge of collapse, the phone hacking scandal is edging ever closer to forcing ministerial resignations, but are we worried?  Hell no - we've got the distraction of a performing dog!  Yes indeed, Britain's Got Talent was apparently won by a canine which performed some kind of act, so I'm told, (I'm proud to say that I've never actually watched the programme, or any of Simon Cowell's other programmes, for that matter).  If ever there was a classic case of distraction, surely this is it - the world's going to Hell, and we're all fixated on a sodding dog that performs tricks, (magic tricks, for all I know - it could be the canine Paul Daniels).  You can't escape it - even the bloody Guardian has wasted precious column inches on it.  Bearing in mind Cowell's Tory sympathies, one can't help but extrapolate one of those 'convenient conspiracies', where all of his various 'talent' shows are actually designed to distract the public from what's really going on and instead get us to focus on the meaningless 'narratives' of the contestants and the 'heart-warming' story of their 'successes' as his shows pull them from obscurity to instant fame.

Not that I'm saying that Cowell is manipulative when it comes to the media and public opinion, but his most recent attempts to garner public sympathy have been both obvious and preposterous.  You remember - all that stuff about learning some humility after the US X-Factor got lower than anticipated ratings. Utter bollocks!  In fact, almost as big a load of bollocks as the supposed embarrassment that 'unauthorised' biography caused Cowell.  Yeah, like he's ever embarrassed by anything that gives him publicity.  I don't know whether it's because Cowell has grown tired of being a 'heel' (to use wrestling terminology) and fancies some time as a 'face', or whether he just thinks that there's more appeal and therefore more potential viewers to be had as a sympathetic character, I don't know, but it's clear that Cowell is trying to make like a WWE wrestler and switch from 'heel' to 'face'.  He clearly thinks that the key to garnering sympathy lies in allowing the public to see a more #vulnerable' side to him, which, in practice, means showing some 'weakness': admitting to disappointment over ratings, conceding he might have made a mistake in thinking it would be easy to break the US and, most of all, that biography.  The biography is key, by allowing himself to be portrayed as vain and insecure, he believes he is allowing the public to see him as 'human' and imperfect and therefore more sympathetic.  By then claiming the biography's 'revelations' had caused him embarrassment, he's trying to have his cake and eat it: I'm not just flawed but, I'm even more human because I know to be embarrassed by these flaws. Pathetic!  He just wants us to jump through emotional hoops like bloody performing dogs.