Covering Up

I often imagine that I am on one of those TV morning chat shows – the ones that leaf through the newspapers and pick out interesting stories of the day. As I leaf through my morning paper (a very rare event seeing as we don’t have morning papers delivered!) I mentally select the ones that I would highlight, and rehearse the comments I might make.

The article I came up with was a commentary on the way in which X-Factor selects the auditions that it televises. Some of the acts, without doubt, are not really up to scratch. We have all seen them, cringed at them or laughed at them maybe. There are some things that aught not to be televised.

Why do people do it? They really haven’t got an ounce of talent for singing, dancing, spinning plates or whatever it is that they are doing. Why do they insist on parading their lack of talent in front of 4 million viewers? Do they really think they are good? Have they not asked an objective observer to check them out first before they head for the stage?

I am glad that I am as old as I am, and that in my day they didn’t have these reality shows. I have a feeling I might have strutted my stuff – or my absence of stuff – before an audience of 4 million had I had the chance! Youth has a way of convincing us of things that just aren’t true. Since I am now grown up, I now see the stuff in a mature and sensible light, and know that the 4 million who saw would have cringed, or laughed at me.

Why do other people who should know better allow them to do it? It seems to me that we live in a world where some people take delight in exposing, and laughing at the weaknesses of others. Someone else’s humiliation should not be another person’s entertainment.

Somewhere in the Bible it encourages us to cover one another’s weakness up – not one another’s sins. Way back in the Old Testament, Noah’s sons walked backward into a room, holding a blanket, to cover up the nakedness of Noah who had got drunk and exposed himself.

If only the producers of X-Factor would walk backwards across a stage, holding a blanket, to cover up the lack of talent in some of their contestants and prevent them from exposing themselves!