Idol-atry

Last night marked the season premiere of the television show that allows the whole country to become one big high school clique, catty and mean and all superior-acting. I speak, of course, of "American Idol.''

The beginning episodes always focus, to continue the high school metaphor, on the "kids'' who are wedgied and swirlied constantly. What is amazing is the total lack of self-awareness on the part of some of these doomed contestants. Don't they know how bereft of talent they are?''

There is something sad about people who do not avail themselves of the prayer-like plea of Robert Burns: "O wad some Power the giftie gie us - To see oursels as ithers see us! ...''
All of us are sometimes blind as to how we come off to others, us with spinach in our teeth, the toilet paper on our shoe or the braggadocio that makes people avoid us. But for those who don't, I guess putting the results on national television is par for the course.