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After the news of Susan Boyle's admission to a mental clinic for evaluation, I just plain hit the ceiling. I'd followed the stories of Boyle's much-justified outbursts last week - "much-justified" because Boyle was reportedly deliberately harassed by a couple of evil journalists who set out to make her upset - and could not understand how the producers of the now-popular TV Show "Britain's Got Talent" (BGT) would not get protection for Boyle and shield her away from harm.
I then watched in horror as news outlets around the World put all the weight of the issue on her, writing she's "having a meltdown", "SuBo goes loco", or "flies off the handle all the time" or words to that effect, and figured that it was some elaborate PR stunt possibly developed by the BGT minders just to hype up the ratings as people tuned in to see what she would do at the final event, then cement the show's popularity because of the upset loss that was sure to occur since the call-in audience's vote would be effected by the news of her problems.
That's what happened. After the show, Boyle reportedly ran down a hallway screaming "I hate this show." Well I agree with Ms. Boyle 100 percent. The way BGT treated Boyle, and really how a portion of the World handled her, says nothing good about our Western culture and everything bad about how we've "evolved" in the 21st Century.
The more I see it, we're diving headlong into "Revelations" in the Bible, with a Tribulation (a period of persecution and of people who believe in God) and the Second Coming the only way to get us out of this spritual mess. I'm serious. We have some terrible people in our midst. People who would take advantage of a woman with a disability - Boyle has a learning disability - for their own gain, then toss her aside when they're done with her, or create the climate to do so, as BGT did.
Let's recap. First, Boyle enters the BGT competition and when she appears on stage, is made fun of by the audience and the judges. A terrible scene. Then she opens her mouth to sing and the same tormentors cheer her on. BGT and American Idol judge Simon Cowell is wowed. His collegue Piers Morgan takes Boyle on a date. Suddenly, the 47-year old woman still greaving from the loss of her mother in 2007 has reason to smile. After years of loneliness and emotional pain calmed by singing, Boyle's loved around the World for her singing. Boyle said "I'm not lonely anymore," and even had people she never met before flying in to visit her home in Scotland from as far away as Peru. Wild.
But then the dark side emerges. It comes in the form of what we in America call "haters": people who hate to see anyone other than themselves achieve a high level of success. People calling her "matronly", "frumpy", and a "spinster". Fueled by the hypermedia world created by Web 2.0, haters have something negative to say about almost everyone it seems and where they don't have something bad to say, they'll create a reason to say it. Enter the journalists. Stalking Boyle. Camping out at her home all day and night. Taking pictures of her and harassing her. And all the time BGT just lets this happen to her. Hey, as long as she's generating ratings for them, I guess they just don't care.
Boyle's brother Gerry was right, Boyle should have quit BGT while she was on top two weeks after her grand introduction. BGT would have been forced to bring her back, if only to save its ratings, which certainly would have tanked had she left. But Boyle stuck it out, and strangely on the week before what was predicted to be her contest-winning final performance, Boyle gets treated in a horrible way never reported before (I still don't know exactly what those two men who harrassed her said to her) and she responds in the way anyone new to massive celebrity would do: she got hopping mad and called the cops. That set in motion the negative PR campaign against her, and caused her loss.
Sorry, I think BGT has to answer for this; there's already an investigation of how Boyle was treated, and reportedly British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called to see how Boyle was doing. Good. And if I'm "Diversity", the talented dance group that scored the upset win in Britain's Got Talent, I'd want an answer too. That's no way to win a competition, and they should know it.
All We Need Is Love
Watching Boyle go through this is painful for me. It's a reminder of how much evil exists around us and that we can never stop confronting it. In the end, the Beatles song was right on: All We Need Is Love. I love to see people succeed. I love to see people reach their dreams. Celebrities, to me, are to be celebrated just for being in the spotlight they've so wanted to have for so long. Great! Seeing people smile - the grin of a child or of a middle-aged woman who never thought her talent would see the light of day - not cry, should be everyone's objective. That it's not is the measure of our ability to do bad, not good. If this is you, whereever you are, stop and change. Please.
