An Idol moment

Back in the lingering end of the hippie days in the late 70s and early 80s, consumer activist David Horowitz used to have a TV show. He’d come on and rail about how horrible it was that the “butter” on movie theater popcorn was actually some kind of oily goo that had never seen the insides of a cow. He also had a passionate hatred of over-packaging. Seemed like at least once a show he’d haul out a bag of cookies, open it up and show us all the evil travesty of excessively airy plastic trays.

The problem with acting offended by a foot-long cookie bag that turns out to be eight inches of polystyrene is that Americans love packaging, often more than we love the actual product.

Take Coke for example. All this product really offers us is corn syrup and caffeine, with carbonated water as an afterthought just to make it drinkable. Everything else, from the familiar brown color to the uniquely-styled bottle, is just, well, packaging. But take away the magical color and nobody buys it, as Crystal Pepsi proved back in the 80s.

Sadly, I think that spells doom for my latest, greatest show idea: American Asylum.

I’ve gotta start this one with a history lesson. Back in the days before television, people sought entertainment outside their homes. And one popular amusement destination was local insane asylums. England’s Bethlem asylum was particularly well known as a spot where the upper crust and even the newly-semi-idle middle class could pass a few carefree hours gawking at the mental patients. And if the inmates’ gibbering and cavorting wasn’t sufficiently entertaining, patrons were invited to poke them with sticks to get them riled up.

Attending trials was another popular pastime, one that has been a repeated success in syndication. So if it works for courtrooms, why not the loony bin? Let’s parade crazy people across TV screens and let the ad-watching-product-consuming public gawk at them. Should work, right?

On paper, maybe. But in reality, that might be a bit too much like offering consumers a bottle full of caffeinated corn syrup. They’ll drink it. They want to drink it. But they need some kind of packaging in order to make the experience palatable.

And that’s the real genius of American Idol, which recently started its seventh season. Like the carefully-camera-facing beverages on the judges’ table, it what we crave packaged up nicely so we don’t feel bad about consuming it. We want to feast on the auditions of deluded nutjobs who think they’re going to be famous for anything but their own freakishness. We want to watch Simon poke them with a stick to get them going real good. And as long as we can maintain the pretense that this is actually some kind of talent show, everything is nice and socially acceptable.

So poke on, Simon. America toasts your good health with an ice-cold bottle of Coke.