Rant Rant..Susan Boyle and Simon Cowell

Susan Boyle Sings on Britain's Got Talent 2009 Episode 1 @ Yahoo! Video

Unless you live under a rock, you know about the Scottish woman who has taken the industrialized World by storm: Susan Boyle.

Ms. Boyle, who appeared on a reality TV show called "Britains' Got Talent" last Saturday, April 11th and wowed a cynical audience and the judges, including the irascible Simon Cowell (also of American Idol) with her powerful performance of "I Dream A Dream" from Les Miserable has took the World by Internet storm.

What surprised millions - and does not make a great statement about our World industrial culture but is a great example of the power of online video distribution as the video has been seen over 15.9 million times on YouTube (I counted over 10 videos with over 200,000 views) as of this writing - is that someone who looks like her could sing like that. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/abraham/detail?entry_id=38580

Yeeeeks! The judges should have been ashamed of themselves. They pre-judged her simply based on her appearance even before she began to sing. They had already decided that she was a frumpy old lady and started smirking, preparing to laugh at her and make snide remarks. They were practically exchanging "knowing": glances at one another as soon as she walked onstage. Instead she surprised them. Big Deal.

Why should they have been surprised at all? They are there to judge talent and they had fallen into the habit of judging based on superficial appearances. This says so much about the music industry and what is wrong with it. After all, would anybody be listening to Britney if she didn't shake her bum and jiggle her boobs in everybody's faces?