Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Racism behind every bush...

There are few sillier things on TV than reality shows (even though I watch 'em!) and none are more contrived than American Idol. Leave it to moral paragon Elton John to find racism in the selction process. According to CNN, Elton John claims that the most recent castoff, Jennifer Hudson, who is black and apparently a good singer, was the victim of America's racist audiences. Apparently one cannot prefer another singer if they are white. CNN does rightly point out that the winner last year, Ruben Studdard, was black and in my opinion not as good as white runner up Clay Aiken. So it is racist when a black is kicked off, but not when a black singer is the overall winner? Maybe instead of some institutionalized racism, America just didn't like her as well that week....

The more often the Hollywood elite tells us we are racist, the less sting it has and the more resentful we become. No matter what we do, we get labelled racist, so rather than trying to work together amongst ethnicities, we just stop trying. Is that the goal here, to become so hypersensitive that we stop caring at all?

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