The New Republic

Highbrows widely regard the singing competition "American Idol"--and
the contest's mascot, its tart English judge, Simon Cowell--as an
omen of impending cultural apocalypse. To list the specifics of
this grim forecast: Performing more-or-less karaoke, complete with
shooting flames and ocean waves projected on a massive video screen
behind them, contestants pay homage to the most irksome trifles in
the history of pop. (Tonight, we fete the genius of Gloria Estefan;
next week, Barry Manilow!) Despite the unspeakable lameness of
these acts, their perpetrators have occasionally received vote
totals comparable to presidential candidates. And, if you
momentarily allow the escapist pleasures of this spectacle to sweep
you away, your enjoyment will inevitably be interrupted by the
ubiquitous product placements, reminding you of "Idol"'s crassness.
(Damn, Coca-Cola red room!) Above all, there's the smug, cynical
Cowell in his too-tight Armani t-shirts. His unceasing stream of
apercus--"If you were the only person who entered this competition,
you still wouldn't win"--are presented as evidence of a sadistic
penchant for humiliating unworldly teens and the carny masses of
"Idol" wannabes.Leveling this critique at "Idol," however, requires a certain
myopia. It mistakes the trappings of the show-- the endless
renditions of Phil Collins, the shrieking, sign-waving girls in the
audience--for "Idol"'s true contribution to culture. That
contribution comes in the form of Cowell, who, along with his
fellow judges of lesser intellect, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson,
issues critiques of each singer's performance. Every week, he finds
new pejorative descriptions for the lame music he encounters. "I
think you're possibly the worst singer in the world," he has
quipped. Or, "You take singing lessons? Do you have a lawyer? Get a
lawyer and sue your singing teacher." But, far from precipitating
cultural decline, these vicious performances have restored
authority to the one figure that can salvage us from doom: the
critic.

Critics don't just exist as arbiters of taste and explicators of
art. They exist to bemoan their own inability to influence the
world. In an essay on book reviewing, George Orwell once portrayed
the critic as "a man in a moth-eaten dressing gown ... [a]
down-trodden, nerve-racked creature." This selfpitying streak often
makes critics sound like militant Muslim enthusiasts for the lost
caliphate of Al Andalus--always pining, with somewhat selective
memory, for the moment when they exerted genuine authority over
Western civilization. Countless books (The Last Intellectuals, What
Happened to Art Criticism?, every homage to Edmund Wilson ever
written) wax nostalgic for the time when the public paid attention
to the likes of Trilling, Leavis, and Greenberg--a renaissance that
ended with the cultural reformation of the 1960s. By contrast, we
now live in what The Believer's Heidi Julavits has called the
"Teflon age of criticism," where reviews don't stick to either
artists or consumers of art.

"American Idol," however, puts the lie to this nostalgic story line.
Whatever influence Edmund Wilson may have achieved in his prime, it
hardly compares with the power of Cowell. It is true that Cowell
wasn't nurtured by the alcoves of City College or hardened by the
rough-and-tumble of Partisan Review. He comes to criticism by way
of the far less intellectually rigorous record industry, where he
made a career of producing acts like the Spice Girls knockoff Girl
Thing and songs like "So Macho," as well as churning out Power
Rangers albums. This populist sensibility accounts for his
preternatural gift for identifying the ineffable qualities of pop
stardom. Call him the Robert Parker of Top 40. Unlike schooled
critics, who can distinguish a major from a minor chord, Cowell
understands how looks, persona, and "showmanship" can compensate
for a competent but otherwise bland performance. And his career
producing schlock has given him a superb eye for identifying it.

On the program, "Idol" judges render assessments but don't actually
vote for contestants. Their power rests entirely in their ability
to sway the public--in other words, with the power of their
criticism. Although Cowell's harsh pronouncements frequently make
him the subject of jeers during the live broadcasts, his opinions
routinely lead millions to pick up their phones and vote for his
favored candidates. For the past three seasons, he has championed
the contest's eventual winner at an early stage in the competition,
celebrating singers without obvious prospects of triumphing. Last
year, he (alone among the judges) declared country singer Carrie
Underwood the inevitable winner of the competition two months
before the season finale, thus sealing her fate. (Remind me again:
How many readers did Wilson win for the French symbolists?)

Cowell doesn't just influence the outcome of the competition; he
affects its substance. In response to Cowell's advice, raw-sounding
rockers have experimented with unfamiliar genres to expose their
"sensitive side"; torch singers have dropped their crutch reliance
on ballads. Of course, Cowell isn't shy about claiming credit for
these small victories. ("Well, I have to take a certain amount of
credit for that performance," he boasted several weeks ago.) When
spreading the good news about his favored singers, Cowell avoids the
fate of many contemporary critics, especially movie reviewers.
After watching so much dreck, movie reviewers get so excited when
they encounter a solidly constructed film that they lose control of
their faculties, slathering Million Dollar Baby and Crash with
superlatives formerly reserved for Fellini and Scorsese. Cowell, on
the other hand, will frequently begin his most effusive comments
with a deprecating remark about the contestant's hair style or past
performances. And, even in his most enthusiastic moments, he'll
rarely say more than "very good" or "it worked." But, in his
restraint, he has achieved the ultimate critical fantasy--to
actually shape the objects of criticism, to play the role of
co-creator.

When Cowell issues his judgments, he likes to begin by denying the
obvious. "I don't mean to be rude," he apologizes. Then he will go
on to say something like, "You have about as much Latin flair as a
polar bear. It was horrendous." And, to be fair, he isn't truly
rude. His comments more precisely fall within a subgenre of
criticism known as "snark," to borrow a phrase from Julavits's
widely discussed essay on the state of criticism. Snark, by her
definition, is when "reviews are just an opportunity for a critic
to strive for humor, and to appear funny and smart and a little bit
bitchy, without attempting to espouse any higher ideals." For
Julavits, snark, which she denounces as both self- serving and
nihilistic, has played an essential role in creating modern-day
critics' impotence.

This definition of snark superficially captures Cowell. But it also
gets Cowell profoundly wrong. His meanness is the source of his
authority. When he keelhauls contestants, his favored terms of
abuse are "karaoke," "cabaret," "cruise ship," and "wedding
singer." These cut-downs capture the essence of "Idol." Contestants
are singing well-known pop songs. Successful singers are those who
transcend the artificiality of the format and become more than
"some ghastly Xerox machine." And, while Cowell may be harsh, he is
rarely strident. He has retracted criticisms that don't hold up on
his second watching of the show. "We were wrong," he told
contestant Katharine McPhee a few weeks ago after deciding that her
rendition of Whitney Houston's "I Have Nothing" had something after
all. Because he never fails to point out crap--and because he has
the honesty to admit failure--viewers actually trust his opinions.

Cowell, if we're honest, also owes his authority to his company at
the judges' table. His judgments usually follow comments by former
Los Angeles Lakers cheerleader Paula Abdul and former Journey
bassist Randy Jackson. Both embody the characteristics praised by
Julavits. They refrain from gratuitous bitchiness and
self-consciously follow every critique with constructive criticism.
"It was just alright for me, dude," is Jackson's euphemism for
wretched. If Abdul can't find anything praiseworthy in a
performance, she will applaud a contestant for choosing good shoes.
"We love you!" she will add. The tandem has styled itself the
anti-Cowell. They seem to take great pleasure in waxing indignant
about Cowell's pistol-whippings, with Abdul and Jackson frequently
leading choruses of boos directed at the Brit. This avoidance of
snark may make Abdul and Jackson better human beings, but it makes
them irrelevant, mealy-mouthed critics. Unlike Cowell, they have
never exerted clear influence on the course of the competition,
never anointed a winner or sunk a loser. And, in the end, their
niceness doesn't expose their moral superiority-- just their lack
of conviction and confidence in their own taste.

Unfortunately, Cowell has used his "Idol" success as a springboard
for expanding his empire of schlock. He generated a string of not
very edifying reality TV shows, such as "Cupid" (wherein Americans
voted on potential husbands for a single woman) and "American
Inventor" (which brought us such life-changing products as the
Flushpure toilet seat lid), as well as the requisite
celebrity-at-the-height-of-fame memoir, I Don't Mean to Be Rude, But
. .. His latest confection, a boy band composed of opera singers,
Il Divo, has, shockingly, ascended to the top of the charts. And
premiering in June is Cowell's ultimate Waiting for Guffman-like TV
production: the hopefully ironically named "America's Got Talent,"
which will expand the "Idol" format to include dancers, comedians,
and even animal acts. What makes this so tragic isn't that his
projects will inject so much more garbage into the culture; it's
that Cowell might be ignoring his true calling. Last I checked, the
Partisan Review franchise is still available.

P14

As both my husband and I scrambled to meet work deadlines last
week--while simultaneously juggling multiple doctors' appointments
and assuring our daughter's day care teachers that, yes, one of us
would still be able to watch the class for an hour during the
monthly staff meeting--it once again struck me: What most modern
marriages really need is an extra wife.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately in response to all the
buzz surrounding HBO's new polygamy-themed hit, "Big Love."
Conservatives have taken to brandishing the show as Exhibit A in
the fight against gay marriage. That is, once we breach that hard,
bright line delineating marriage as the union of one man and one
woman, the next thing you know, we'll all be living in multi-spouse
chaos, with too many kids, credit card bills, pool toys, cat fights,
complex copulation schedules, and Viagra prescriptions for any sane
person to keep track of.

To a certain extent, I agree (with the criticism of polygamy, not of
gay marriage), but largely because "Big Love"'s Henrickson clan has
approached this whole multi-spouse business from exactly the wrong
angle. As in real life, the show's polygamy--or, more specifically,
its polygyny--is wrapped up in the biblical mandate to be fruitful
and multiply. As soon as one wife gets too old and run down to
breed efficiently, you bring in a new model. But let's face it: No
matter how devoutly Pat Robertson wishes it were so, none of us is
living in Old Testament times. And the major problem facing the
American family today is not a shortage of children.

In far too many modern families, however, there is a corrosive
shortage of support--of the physical, logistical, and, perhaps most
importantly, emotional kinds--once consistently provided by your
garden variety housewife. Just look at the ever-growing pile of
articles, books, and polls pointing to how much stress and friction
couples are suffering in their eternal struggle to balance
conflicting work and family duties. Typically, the gist of these
discussions is that, if only women could find a way to lighten the
domestic load that still tends to fall disproportionately on their
shoulders, marital bliss would follow.

Maybe. But probably not. Certainly, there's no question that having
good child care and a husband who knows his way around the kitchen
can make a gal's life easier. And, for those with the financial
means, an army of highly competent domestic help can remove most of
the sting of housekeeping. Still, no matter how many nannies or
housekeepers or personal assistants the more affluent among us
employ, at the end of a long day, most of us still won't come home
to someone whose primary mission in life is to see to the well-being
of our households. Even if the government began issuing every
family its own Mary Poppins and men suddenly decided that they
desperately wanted to spend their evenings folding laundry and
frosting cupcakes for preschool, this still wouldn't address the
emotional and spiritual void left by the disappearance of the
traditional housewife about which Caitlin Flanagan writes so
nostalgically in her recent book To Hell With All That.

With her unflinching focus on what we lost with the women's
movement, Flanagan has drawn heavy fire from many working mommies
and their ilk. But the book is so inflammatory in part because of
its uncomfortable-but-tough-to- dispute observations. For instance,
at the end of a chapter examining our tendency to farm out domestic
chores once handled by housewives, Flanagan notes: "What's missing
from so many affluent American households is the one thing you
can't buy: the presence of someone who cares deeply and principally
about that home and the people who live in it."

Of course, it's not only affluent households missing this nurturing
figure. Moving down the income ladder, the issue of moms working
may be more about economic need than personal fulfillment, but the
result is the same. And, before we blame this entire mess on mom's
selfish insistence on a career, keep in mind that even today's
full-time mommies bear little resemblance to the housewives of
yore. As Flanagan points out, just note the difference in
nomenclature. A huge chunk of today's "stay-at-home moms" are home
because they are utterly devoted to raising perfect, perfectly
adjusted children; but, with all the music lessons, soccer
practices, and tumbling camps for the kids, they often have as
little (maybe even less) time to devote to their houses and
marriages as do their working counterparts. In these households, as
surely as in those of hard-charging careerist mommies, gone is the
kind of woman who greeted her husband at the door each evening with
a kiss and a cold martini, assured him that the homefront was under
control, and insisted that he tell her all about his day in the
trenches.

It is into this breach that an extra wife could step. Better still,
since the kind of multi-spouse arrangement I'm envisioning isn't
about maximizing the number of offspring, one could just as easily
have a household with two husbands. Indeed, the key to this brand
of polygamy would be to make clear up front that the second-spouse
slot was for a woman or man specifically not interested in
procreating. After all, how could you save labor with two full
families' worth of kids but not two full families' worth of
parents?

Obviously, this kind of life wouldn't be for everyone. The search
for a less self-abnegating existence is, after all, what destroyed
the institution of housewifery to begin with. But maybe with a bit
of clever marketing, you could appeal to men and women looking to
indulge their inner domestic goddess--or simply to find stable
companionship--without the strain of bearing all the
responsibilities of spousehood alone.

Despite the obvious advantages of an extra spouse, some couples
might be a tad skittish about jumping into anything so permanent as
a second marriage. Never fear: For them, I have an alternative
solution proffered by a Georgetown student responding to a blog
item I recently wrote on this subject. What I seemed to be
advocating, noted the student, wasn't a full-fledged second spouse
so much as a marital intern--unpaid, naturally, as all good interns
are. Now that is exactly the kind of outside-the-box thinking my
husband and I could use at our house. Just give us a call, kid.
We've got a pile of laundry and a defrosted pork roast awaiting
your tender ministrations. And we both like our martinis made with
gin, not vodka. We're traditional that way.

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