The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Susan Show

As much as I need to carefully read the Bybee and other Justice Department memos to discover whether "dictated but not read" appears anywhere in the lawyerly text documenting the banality of evil, I can't resist one more comment on the Susan Boyle phenomenon, still reverberating in the Scottish village of Blackburn. 

I'm afraid, Kerry, that the ham-handed and patronizing season seasoning you despair of, from Britain's Got Talent judge Amanda Holden, who won't let Simon's dentist go near the "unspoiled" singer, is just the beginning of a giant social experiment and successful series akin to the Truman Show.  (The twist here is the Jim Carrey role is played by a matronly Scottish lady who accidentally plucked herself from obscurity.)  Susan Boyle and her neighbors may enjoy the media invasion of their small village now teeming with TV bookers and satellite trucks chasing 20 million hits on YouTube. Maybe the West Lothian community is comfortable with the lone Simon Cowell-dispatched handler, guarding the new celebrity at her cottage door, while everybody else in town shares tankards and talk, in fantastic accents, with the sophisticated cellphoned entertainment reporters in their midst.  I personally tend to agree, however, with Fray commentator ScrewJack2008 who posted "My advice would be to return to anonymity as soon as possible before these people all chew you up and spit you out to serve their own agendas. Just run for your fucking life."