Britain's Got Talent Drama; Simon Speaks

[Allamorph]

[FONT=Arial][URL="http://tinyurl.com/laqkl8"][COLOR="Blue"]Article[/COLOR][/URL]

So Simon Cowell has been criticised now for giving rough criticism and giving criticism roughly. And you know what? Reactions to him never cease to amaze me. But enough of that.

The point is, do you agree with what he says? (I mean in the article, although agreeing with his criticism is also a valid angle to examine.)

From my perspective, anytime you are in a situation where you're suddenly dealing with massive amounts of attention, there's going to be pressure that you're not used to. When things go great in these circumstances, the high is incredible. But the flip side of that is that the low when you mess up is gut-wrenching.

I mean, I know this. I've listened to recordings of ensembles I've been in where one mistake on my part (the only one I made in that performance) sounded as bad as if I had stood up and started throwing pottery around. And it makes you sick. A situation as public as Britain's Got Talent has to be at least ten times worse.

And you can't always assume people will be rational about criticism. The single biggest risk one can take as a forthright, honest critic is that the criticism you give may occasionally strike a wrong chord with someone. People don't always react well to being told they're doing things wrong.[/FONT]

[Raiha]

[FONT="Times New Roman"][COLOR="DarkOrchid"]*checks frantically for any threads of more serious import to comment on before stooping to taking this one seriously*

I agree with him entirely. I never had a problem with Simon, believing him to be an important foil to the cow faced mooing of Paula and whoever else was up there spouting lines like: "Oh honey that was just incredible. Fabulous! You're such a star."

As far as children? Don't let them on the show for chrissake. I have young siblings that are 11 and as of today 9. When they're standing up in front of their peers at a BASEBALL game and the coach yells at them, they cry. When they're swimming at practice and another coach yells at them to tighten up their form, if they've had a stressful or tiring day, they cry. Children are emotionally all over the place at that age, and I think it's unfair of critics to have to soft-pedal and give special treatment to children who may simply not have appeared as good as the slightly less brittle adults.

For the Susan Boyle thing? She was emotionally fragile, but at least didn't make an enormous scene on camera. I think the media had an unreasonably enormous festival with her and the way the show handled it was the best they could do at the time.

For all the people saying "Simon is a big fat meanie head?" Well duh. He's a critic. It's what he does. If he turned tricks on the street corner he'd be a prostitute. If he took money from people, he'd be working for the IRS. A show can't have all three judges looking at the performers with stars in their eyes going: "Duaaaaaaaawwwwwwww...." Those who proclaim that Simon was just treating them horribly either was not hugged enough by mommy, or simply do not have the emotional wherewithal to appear on television in a TALENT show. A show designed specifically to pick out good from bad and elevate the good to the status it 'deserves.' So if you weren't so amazing, or you think you were exploited, it's probably just you annoyed that you didn't turn out to be the latest ... ...yeah I neither know or care who won these things.[/COLOR][/FONT]