America is fucked, y'all.

Georgia had a friend around tonight to help make a pinata for our party on Saturday, and somehow the three of us ended up sitting on the floor in the lounge room eating pizza dosa and watching So You Think You Can Dance. We were sitting on the floor because Bec got into a fervour of party planning today and ended up moving all the furniture into the back room to clear space for a dance floor. Which came in handy, when we were emulating the 'peace dance' that every single fucking dancer performed solo tonight.

The 'peace dance' was an incredibly hackneyed piece of choreography that showcased some amazing technical ability and overly earnest emoting. Such terribly emoting. The 'peace dance' also involved dancers drawing a heart in the air with their fingers, making the peace sign, and wearing white pyjamas with a peace sign drawn on the front. In any case, none of us really thought it was anything more than a crass attempt to bring a 'story' to the boring process of solo dance performances and proceeded to make anal sex jokes and contort ourselves imitating the dancers.

Anyway, apparently Channel Ten shows the performance show and the voting show on the same night here, as opposed to it being two different programs in the US, and as soon as the second component started it became apparent that some parts of the US, not all but some parts, are royally fucked. That is, the host alluded to some controversy, to the station being bombarded with calls, and I just assumed that they suddenly realised that they had been duped into watching the same terrible solo ten times and wanted to complain, and didn't give it much credence.

And then. And then the executive producer and one of the judges, incidentally British and with a quintessential British manner that was both scathing and utterly sincere, was facing the camera, apologizing to anyone who had been offended by the 'peace dance', saying that it was possible to want peace without actively trying to undermine our troops in Iraq, and that everyone supported the troops and the dance was just trying to express the hope and optimism that the dancing youth of America have for the future, and really, that he's sorry that your son is serving in Afghanistan but he has the utmost respect for their decision and that showcasing several dancers making heart shapes with their hands is not some sort of elaborate ploy to indicate to Al Quaeda that America is fundamentally soft on the War on Terror.

I think he actually used the line, "it is not unpatriotic to wish for peace". And that is when I left the room, and screamed into a pillow for five minutes before returning to pinata shenanigans. It's just a dancing show. It's just a bunch of angry people telephoning in their ignorant, hate-filled disapproval, because they have nothing better to do than make their minority opinions as loud and hate-filled as possible. Because surely they're a minority, right?

Either that or America is fucked, y'all.


UPDATE: TWoP is more concise than me. Not that that will make me delete any of this pizza-dosa-induced rambling, so, like, whatevs...