Ethics and American Television: Corey Clark and Paula Abdul
American Idol is perhaps the most watched show in television, yet it continues to divide the American public right down the middle when popular contestants remain on the show long after talented hopefuls do.
Often the top five are a handful of individuals that America likes; stars that can offer the kind of bubble gum that fuels the infatuations of young teenage girls who would pass out at a concert.
The only problem with this is that while it is nothing for yet another ready-made pop star who is overly attractive to sing to American’s public it is quite another to entertain the idea that a young contestant who has had a sexual relationship, allegedly, could have won the contest, although he did not even come close to doing so.
The American Broadcasting Corporation was the helpful shoulder for this young man to cry on, and they did not pass up an opportunity to get a piece of the controversy that his story would bring about.
Enter a Primetime Live special: FALLEN IDOL. ABC News was triumphant with their expose about Paula Abdul’s alleged relationship with Corey Clark, garnering them the highest ratings of a news program in over a year.
They were smart enough to show the Primetime Now special a half hour after Idol’s results show, allowing both devotes of American Idol and cynics to tune into the network.
Skepticism aside, Clark did little nothing but allow viewers to make their own conclusions from random tidbits of “information” he had given to John QuiÃ?±ones, random data he presented during the interview of which is meaningless unless you look at it from a larger picture.
Abdul coached him, seduced him, and then dumped him once word of his prior arrest record surfaced as Fox released him from the show. Rather than assuage her grief, Clark went to the press with his story after she had begged him not to print a tell-all book. Here is the thing though; Clark is uninterested in helping Fox with their own internal investigation, even though he wants to “set the record straight”.
Evidently setting the record straight involved dragging Paula through the mud. Among other interesting points were ABC’s spin on their own former coverage of show; they interviewed other contestants who did not place in the top 10 either last year (big surprise there), of which one young woman said that she “wasn’t surprised” because she had “heard rumors” of the relationship. It also would be “unfair” to those other contestants if the allegations were untrue.
The repercussions can go even farther than Paula’s being removed from the hit show; if the FCC can show that the show was fixed, lending to the ongoing conspiracies that perhaps it still is, they have cause to take legal action against the network as the game is then perceived as being illegal. Given the following this show has, it is enough to get devotees with burning torches out in the street asking for his head, if it were to come to that.
There is also the argument as to exactly why Paula Abdul, whose celebrity could get her pretty much anyone she wanted, would stoop to seducing Clark in the first place. At the end of the day you have two individuals, one who should have thought better that being a snitch would further his career, and another who should have thought better about putting him in that situation in the first place, if that is indeed what was done.
This is not really about an affair, it is about the common held belief that any 15 minutes of fame is better than none whatsoever, and that being a household name, for any amount of time, is enough to take you places.
I hope that Corey gets what he is so terribly seeking from all of this and that Paula moves on with her life one way or the other. As much as I frown upon those who kiss and tell, I guess it would be a bit hard to keep ones mouth shut given who it is he’s telling about, then again, perhaps it should have been all the more reason to forget about it and move on.
