Celebrity Apartheid Week: Some People Aren't Big Bullies....

... just big girls' blouses.


Case in point: Ryan Murphy, progenitor of the truly awful show, Glee. What amount of time would a right-thinking individual spend watching scrawny teen-agers belt out crappier versions of crappy songs on a weekly basis? And why? It's not reflective of reality and it certainly isn't enjoyable. Remember when Jane Lynch was in Best in Show and A Mighty Wind? Why did she sell out? What did Ryan Murphy promise her? It can't have been the hilarity of the movies she's been in.


What a hack Murphy is!


And an insolent whiner and a cringer, apparently. Ryan Murphy thinks that not only should everyone watch his show (the UN-mirror of the real teen-aged world) but self-respecting artists should donate their hard work for his audio butchery. This article says it best:

Glee is the worst show on television, and its creator Ryan Murphy is the most unabashed bigot in television.  We saw Kathy Griffin portray an egregious Tea Party stereotype last week (and, remember– this character was supposed to highlight Murphy’s “inclusiveness” toward conservatives), and Murphy has continued this winning trend by making friends and influencing people mouthing off about artists who have actually created the popular music he parasitically exploits.  I’m sensing a pattern here; anyone who dares to challenge Murphy gets publicly insulted, even with hateful portrayals on his show (including shockingly racist ones– but more on that later).

I will admit, when it was first announced, I looked forward to the show, because it was promoted as an offbeat comedy featuring Jane Lynch, who’s normally hilarious, but it’s nothing of the sort.  This is a soap opera of the worst kind– it’s the ultimate wet dream for the kind of people who actually believe that gays should be more outraged at high school bullies than Shariah-ordered executions.  

(Sidebar: tell me about it)

It’s nothing but blatant wish fulfillment for TV executives who are at the top of the world but can’t get over some hangup from high school. Your glee club wasn’t that great and didn’t get any funding in school?  Aww, poor baby, let’s make a show where everyone in the glee club would be a final contestant on American Idol! You got picked on in high school?  That’s okay, you can write a show where the homophobic bully is secretly gay!  Don’t like Christians opposing gay marriage? No worries; we’ll just create a stupid, belligerent, superstitious, overweight, violent black character to mock them...

And, even worse, it’s a musical.  Not a musical in the sense that characters express themselves through songs– it’s a musical where the characters extraneously break into glammed-up, severely auto-tuned covers of hit pop songs.  It’s all about leeching off the success of those who create in the music world…
… and some in that world have begun to publicly denounce it.

When the band Kings of Leon quietly rejected a request to license their music to the show, Murphy shot backhim “arts education.”  Slash of Guns ‘n’ Roses rightly dissed the show as an insult to musicals, and Murphy tactfully declared, “people who make those comments, their careers are over; they’re uneducated and quite stupid.”  That’s odd, because the rather popular and prolific Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz didn’t have nice things to say about Glee, either.  Nor does Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters:  ”f— that guy for thinking anybody and everybody should want to do Glee.” by telling the band “F— you,” calling them “self-centered a–holes,” then accusing them of the unforgivable sin of neglecting


I’m glad that a Glee backlash is building in the music community; Murphy is little more than a bully with simultaneous messiah and victim complexes.  A normal, well-adjusted adult would recognize that not 100% of the music community is going to want to hear its work turned into pitch-corrected teenybopper jams and accept the fact that not 100% of his licensing requests will be accepted.  However, Murphy interprets these as insults, not only against him but against his mission, as if a vapid primetime soap opera is crucial to “arts education” in America (“Allow me to butcher your songs… it’s for the children!”).

Wow. Just wow. The show is not satire, it's outright insulting. Satire involve wit and subtlety. Where is the satire in lampooning an angry black Christian who hates math (because, apparently, all Christians hate math)? That's just a disgusting caricature. No, it's worse, actually. She is, however, just one in a gallery of travesties. It's like lining up duck decoys to shoot. "Don't like that one- bang."



Oh no! Gun imagery! Even the word "gun" kills!



The show and its desecrated songs are not amusing. It's electronica noise. And it's helmed by some annoying twit of a person who is simply incapable of adult behaviour. An adult (assuming he was stupid enough to even conceive of this show in the first place) would just accept rejection and move on. Not Murphy, though. I can just see an enormous infant pumping his fists into the air and yelping until he turn purple. If there is anyone who deserves acidic backlash, it's Ryan Murphy.