America’s Got Talent - Some of America, Anyway

I have a confession to make: I watch America’s Got Talent, and quite enjoy it. I know, I know - David Hasselhoff is in it, and I’m slightly embarrassed to be watching anything in which he appears. But despite his awfulness (proof thereof), it’s an entertaining show. There’s a surprising amount of people who appear on it who are genuinely talented. There’s admittedly only one winner, but perhaps those talented individuals who appear on the show will gain the exposure they need to make it big elsewhere.

It’s not, however, the talented people I’m wondering about. I’m wondering about the people who stand in a massive line of people for a whole day or more, in order to show on national television that they’re not overly talented. Or worse, that they’re just downright bad. Take, for example, this couple, who claim they’re going to wow the world with “Polka Today”, a style of dance they created. While I know very little about dance, what they’re doing does not look particularly revolutionary. Are they suppose to look so… flaily? Perhaps it was just a bluff, but the guy seems genuinely confident that their dancing will impress everyone there. Or check out this compilation video of some of the worst acts seen in this season thus far. What were these people thinking when they said, “Hey, I think I’ll try to win America’s Got Talent”? Did the Ozzy impersonator really think he sounded like Ozzy? They showed his closing remarks on the show (not included in the above video), and he, too, seemed to feel that he was genuinely good.

I’m sure some people who go on the show just do it to be a goof; they know they have no real talent, and that they have no real chance of winning. They do it to for laughs, to say “look at me, I’m on TV!” But it really does seem that a lot of the folks who are just bad think they’ve got what it takes to win the competition. Are their talent radar machines broken? I suppose tone deafness might explain some of the awful singers, but what of the magicians who drop their cards, lose their birds, and fall to the floor when they try to “levitate”? The lady who tried to rap, while jumping up and down on big shards of broken glass? The lady who crushed a sack full of soda cans with her enormous breasts?

What’s up with these people? The show is American’s Got Talent, folks, not American’s Got Crazy People. (Not to imply that we don’t have our fair share of those, mind you…)