I was reading a piece in Billboard about the new season of “The X Factor” and, boyohboy, hasn’t the publication changed editorial course since the days when the late and brilliant Timothy White was Editor- White being a great writer and one of the knowledgeable and influential albeit controversial music writers?
Billboard, once the world’s leading music trade publication, has changed editorial course and now includes lightweight fluff much like Rolling Stone does today- a million miles away from when it as the Rock and Roll bible with the writings of Rock’n Roll prophets like David Marsh, Chet Flippo, Ben Fong-Torres, Cameron Crowe, political cameos by the good Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and which some of collected rabidly just for the amazing covers usually photographed by Annie Leibowitz .
Like Billboard, Rolling Stone, too, has fallen in line and has become a kinda slightly more hip online magazine version E! Entertainment. It’s all an E! Entertainment world today- light, breezy stories with not too many words and which makes this new journalism a few words past Twitter.
As for Billboard and its recent review of X Factor- Timothy White must be rolling his eyeballs in disbelief from wherever he is- it was and is a sad commentary on life today much like Simon Cowell’s tweets- a middle aged man who has finally discovered the joys of tweeting, but not understanding just how much one’s tweets say about somebody. And Cowell’s tweets show an old bloke with a new toy and tweeting rubbish that no one bothers retweeting.
It’s as sad as seeing a heavily made-up Britney spears looking like some bloated tranny on remote. Watching her forced to judge a one-time duet partner was hard to take. He was a mess and dear Britney, from Pop Princess and now reduced to being a judge on a television talent show with hits no longer happening and her fresh, perky looks replaced by middle age closing in fast and showing the ravages of times, forced to go according to script.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T9-j_o5b_I
Are we really to believe that the judges didn’t know this bloke wasn’t going to show up? Like Susan Boyle, it was a show taking advantage of someone’s misfortune and casting them in the name of “good television.”Susan Boyle, who the judges of Britain’s Got Talent MUST have seen at rehearsal, was made to look dowdy, unkempt and a little loopy but ended up singing and winning everyone over with the judges feigning surprise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9whxWNI7bE
Watch that video again which most of us helped make it go viral after some help from somewhere like Bangalore to get those YouTube views up- and like sheep we lapped up what was spoon-fed to us and passed it on to everyone we knew.
This time, we are given another piece of E! Entertainment which will become “news” and with this sob story being bought and forwarded from one person to the other just as I am doing now. Why?
For intelligent people, somehow, somewhere we have become bored and boredom makes one lose sight of priorities. We might think we are in control, but are we really? Or are we simply helping market rubbish through all the new technology at our disposal and making others rich on our own time and then looking back on our day and realizing that we have achieved bugger all for ourselves?
Hans Ebert
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