Tuesday 2 June 2009

Taking The Blame For Susan Boyle Meltdown

The Susan Boyle story seems to have taken a nasty turn as she is taken to a clinic after concerns for her mental health and blame is being apportioned appropriately.
The media who hounded her, the Britain's Got Talent organisers for not protecting her and Susan Boyle herself are all being accused by each other for her meltdown.
I can't see how any blame can be attached to Susan herself. She had a dream of becoming a singer and went on a talent show to try to fulfill it. The fact that she has well known mental issues due to lack of oxygen at birth should not have stopped her from chancing her arm in the contest but it should of alerted the Britain's Got Talent organisers that Susan should have been handled with care.
Instead, they seemed more than happy to push her into the glare of the media and that is a dangerous game for anyone, let alone an unprepared woman with mental health issues from a small Scottish Town.
The media glare, as they well knew, and especially in Britain, is a double edged sword and maybe they thought that the good publicity would outweigh the inevitable bad when journalists started digging into her background.
When it all began to turn sour last week, she should have been removed from the spotlight and kept away from the pressure surrounding her.
Judge, Piers Morgan, said Boyle had told him that she had "spent most of the week crying, throwing up, not sleeping and generally feeling the weight of the world’s pressures on her" and Psychologists were warning prior to the shows Final that she risked suffering from mental harm following her amazing rise to prominence.
Despite reacting to her defeat calmly on screen, she apparently ran amok backstage after the contest, screaming and attacking a floor manager who tried to calm her down.
The blame has to fall squarely on the shoulders of the Britain's Got Talent team who shamelessly exploited Susan Boyle to publicise their program and maximise the lucrative telephone vote and now owe it to her to make sure she gets the long term help needs as a direct consequence of appearing on their programme.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lucy,

Typical over simplification and finger pointing. She played a part in her path... choices, decisions, consequences.

Q

Falling on a bruise said...

I think it is a rather simple explanation Q. They knew of her problems but rather than protect her, they pushed a mentally unstable woman into the spotlight and left her there until she cracked under the pressure.
Can't blame her for wanting to have a go at fulfilling her dream. Maybe if she knew how it would turn out she wouldn't have done it.

Anonymous said...

Lucy,

yeah, right.

Q

Cheezy said...

I think of equal concern is the fact that some of our lesser newspapers have taken to calling her 'SuBo'...

Falling on a bruise said...

They needed to find something other than the Hairy Angel, that was just weak.