Simon Cowell for the Prosecution, Please

Thank goodness for American Idol. Pop culture needed someone — in this case Simon Cowell — to tear it away from the ridiculous notion that everyone deserves the same amount of success no matter how much or how little talent they have.

Every person is not special. Every person is not a winner. There are those who don’t deserve a second chance, a push, or a little something extra. They need their ass kicked off stage, or their ass just kicked.

For all his abrasiveness, Mr. Cowell knows it doesn’t matter that your mother said you could sing well, because the woman is tone deaf. It doesn’t matter that your classmates voted you best singer at the high school talent show, because a rooster could’ve beat out your competition. In the big people world, if you can’t carry a tune in a bucket, carry your ass outta here.

Unfortunately, Cowell’s example of stepping in where weak and ineffective parents feared to tread has not been followed in other segments of society –- and it shows.

Two seventeen-year-old Wichita North High School students have been charged with aggravated battery, aggravated robbery, and aggravated burglary because of an attack on a 55-year-old woman and her 53-year-old boyfriend. She has staples and stitches in her head and her boyfriend is in critical condition from having been beaten with a wooden baseball bat.

It’s understandable that the mothers of these young men would stand by their sides. The rest of society might have rolled its eyes as the mothers described their sons as “dedicated students, accomplished athletes and leaders of other students,” but those with a little more objectivity would not accept this assessment as gospel and treat the young men accordingly.

Or would they?

A school administrator, a coach, a pastor, and others provided one of the attorneys with letters to be presented to the judge that vouch for one of the young men. Vouching for what, exactly, is anyone’s guess. Over two dozen friends and relatives showed up for both hearings in a show of support for the two young men, whose bat-beating, burglarizing bounty included a Sony DVD player, a PlayStation II, and wallets.

Article Author: Diana Hartman

Diana Hartman is a (ret.) USMC spouse, mother of three in college and a Wichita, Kansas native. She is a contributing writer to Holiday Writes and can be found on Twitter.

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