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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: One size fits all

June 8, 2006 by Terry Teachout

I lost my once-considerable fondness for the National Spelling Bee when I read the first two paragraphs of this column by Larry Elder:

“These aren’t nerds, they are intellectual athletes. They’re all incredibly likable kids that you’re rooting for.”


So spoke ABC’s executive vice president for alternative programming, Andrea Wong, on the network’s decision to air the finals of the 79th Scripps National Spelling Bee–in prime time. The kids received the “American Idol” treatment, with hair and makeup handled by professional stylists. The show included interviews with the contestants, reaction shots of parents and background pieces on some of the finalists. How soon before contestants show up with their own agents and publicists? How long before one of them drops out of the eighth grade to “turn pro”?

I might add that Elder’s column was a favorable account of the National Spelling Bee. Those last two sentences, he explained, were meant as a joke. Alas, ABC’s decision to use “professional stylists” to turn the young contestants into Pretty Pod People was all too unhumorously true.


Stories like this never fail to remind me of a remark George Orwell made to a friend: “This age makes me so sick that sometimes I am almost impelled to stop at a corner and start calling down curses from Heaven.”


That was in 1934.

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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