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Regarding last night’s DWTS episode, the point …
… of having judges is nominally to sort out the best, but the actual algorithm used in elimination makes the judges’ score pretty much irrelevant if they don’t make use of the full range of their paddles (1..10).
The point leader on the night, and the first person to score a 10 this season, was eliminated. Her high score didn’t matter because the judges were handing out 9’s left and right, in a feel-good orgy more saccharin than, well, saccharin.
At the beginning of the show the hosts mentioned that based on the popular vote during the week only, one of the women would be going home, meaning (but not spoken) that all the men outscored the women in the popular vote. Anyone who knows the show’s demographics knows why - it’s the majority female viewers who do the voting, and they were voting for all the male celebs.
So with the judges abdicating their (nominal, but not actual) responsibility to judge and the women viewers voting for their favorite guys, that left arguably one of the three best of the lot and the high scorer of the night out in the cold.
I write all this to reinforce my point yesterday that when looking at our society in America today and the issues we have and how we face, or don’t face, them and how the news media are really not into either factual exposition or investigative journalism, the whole segment of our economy we call the “media” and especially TV exists by convincing their consumer that the consumer is the center of the universe. DWTS does this by constantly reinforcing the idea that the viewer knows best. This is the lust of the Id, to arm-chair use an old phrase - that what is “good” is what I desire.
And this is what is happening in American politics in October 2013. The fundamentalist tea-partiers rant on an on about morality, but their current stunt is 100% about fulfilling their need to cover up their fears and insecurities about life in America in the 21st century. The all-or-nothing tactics are a temper tantrum by a needy persona, not the hallmarks of morality, which in nearly all conceivable ethical frameworks encompasses the idea that other people exist too.
