AMERICA JUST GOT LESS TALENTED

America’s Got Talent premiered last night, a few weeks earlier than usual.  I did not watch it. After years of idolizing it, I voiced my growing disaffection and slammed three X’s into my channel changer and went in search better television fare,  What had possessed them enthrone Howard Stern as their newest judge of America’s talent totally mystifies and only less totally disgusts me. Even Baywatch geezer David Hasselhoff and unamerican Larry King wanna-be Piers Morgan had a better grip on the kind of talent that the average American appreciated.

The downward spiral for America’s Hot Talent began when Howie Mandel was added to the team of judges,  He initially functioned as merely eccentric, obsessed with oddball acts at the expense of true talent. Last year he morphed into demonic as he appeared more intent on making a raging maniac out of Morgan than in finding the next Jackie Evancho.   There were weeks when AGT’s version of The Twilight Zone drove me to reruns of America’s Best Home Videos and the archives of theLifetime Movie Channel.

My sympathies with any one who has auditioned who had real talent.  Unless you wear Seven Dwarf costume or are a drag queen imitator of Tina Turner, you don’t have a chance.  Although taking off your clothes and talking dirty might earn you Stern’s vote.  It sure swayed Hasselhoff and Mandel on more than one occasion.

Get out Sharon Osborne before they try turning you into Rosanne Barr.

 

This seems like a very long time ago