My wife has to make a decision by tomorrow on letting the kids do their William Hung thing. The big concern was that he was being made fun of which would be a rather large negative in her eyes. She doesn't want to allow kids to put on a play where they ridicule someone. There were also concerns with racism charges...not a small issue when you're dealing with elementary school kids.

It seems, according to her, that they see him as more of a hero than goat but...call me a cynic...I voiced a rather strong skepticism of the whole issue. We're talking about kids in grades 3-5 and it's the 5th grade kids that are doing the Hung show.

We did search the web for info but that only confused matters. Yes, there are fan sites but it's hard to determine where they are coming from. I mean there are Karl Rove fan sites out there too. Also, reading the reviews at Amazon was an issue. Some made comments that the Hung routine was in fact thought to be racist. Others said that it was like "making fun of a retard"...which quite obviously was troubling. We did see one video of him on the web where he did his thing in front of what appeared to be at least a thousand screaming kids...of the elementary school age group. Female dancers and all. Hung looked confused by things from my viewpoint and at times even frightened. Could be stage fright sure but my wife was also troubled by his appearance.

I can't see anything about it that seems positive at least from the aspect of allowing kids to put on a play where they pretend to be this guy. My advice to her tonight will be not to allow it. It seems risky in that someone could certainly take offense to it. The kid's singing is offensive on its own. People have complained about stuff in the past that they found inappropriate. William Hung seems to allow for all sorts of complaints. I can imagine a Chinese person flipping out because portraying Hung in all of his ridiculous glory would be considered "racist" and "in a negative light." You can just hear that being tossed around.

To put things in perspective a little, she has never allowed the kids to portray Britney Spears. It was requested every year. Always a little girl that wants to be Britney. Due to the fact that this always ends up in the little girl getting tarted up and doing some anatomy grabbing dance moves...it's a no-no. Other teachers had allowed it in the past and it was not well received. You're talking serious politics when you start playing with these ideas with kids this young. What individual parents will allow and what's put on public display are not in the same ballpark.

Honestly, I just don't get it. The kids have dumped Britney for William Hung. How does this make sense? Britney is what she is but Hung has nothing going on in terms of "entertainment value" that I can see. Maybe it's the idea of "accepting everyone for who they are" that is attractive to the kids but who this kid is...is a guy with no talent for singing. I think this sort of begins to fall into the the area of allowing anybody to do anything whether they are skilled in that area or not. I want to be a singer but I can't sing...it's alright here's a record deal. It certainly proves at least two things:

1. If there's a way to make a buck off something people will take advantage of it.

2. You can sell anything at all to the general public.

Some record company guy and managment guy and whoever else was involved in getting this record out could care less about anything but the cash. Sure, maybe Hung is "living a dream" but if I had a company I wouldn't put my name on this. It's sort of a shame that he got $25,000 to make a record, even if it's nothing to whoever paid him, when they could have spent that money on someone who could actually play or sing. I don't really think in the long run they are looking at it as it'll allow them to sign another Abra Moore...it was a cheap fast buck.

Then you have to wonder about the people who bought this. Yes, some adults might see it as funny...for the first 30 seconds maybe. What about the kids? Why do they find it so amazing? My wife says it's because the kids all love the American Idol show but this kid was a reject right? He didn't make the cut so why celebrate a miserable failure? Or is American Idol today's version of The Gong Show? The thing is I don't remember anybody idolizing the clowns they put on The Gong Show. I just think there is something strange about so many people spending their hard earned cash on this crap. You could certainly find something better to do with your 15 bucks. If the world was a better place I guess the general public would have ignored this and the guys who paid Hung would have flushed their cash down the toilet and learned a lesson. Don't ever do that again. Seems they learned that they should be trying to find out where all those Gong Show rejects went because there's money to be made.

Sorry to ramble but I'm certainly lost with this whole thing.