It’s almost quitting time, which means you’re mere moments away from shrugging off the working world and heading to hearth and home. But before you go whistling down the sunny side of the street, shoulders lightening under the lengthening shadows of another day well spent, we have some bad news for you, wrapped up in a last-minute memo we call Daily Buzzkills.
Self-worth: Nothing is more valuable, besides things with actual value. But much as one can never look at themselves and see what others see—unless they have a camera… or a mirror—for normal people, it’s impossible to define one’s self-worth, let alone put a patently ridiculous monetary appraisal on it. Fortunately, for celebrities it’s not a matter of rigorous inventory or tedious honesty that helps one determine their intrinsic value; all it takes is looking at someone else in your line of work and saying, “I want what they have, plus more.” Such is the strategy currently being adopted by professional enabler Paula Abdul, whose long-rumored departure from Top 40 eugenics program American Idol seems all the more imminent now that her contract renewal seems to be in limbo.
Over the weekend, Abdul’s new manager David Sonenberg told reporters that he had yet to receive a proposal for her new contract and that it didn’t appear Abdul would be strapped into her safety chair next season—which is almost certainly because the network just decided to quietly retire the most famous judge from the show without telling anyone, and not because Sonenberg and Abdul are trying to stir up fan sentiment in order to get them to pay her an insane raise. After all, it’s probably just coincidence that all of this talk started right after it was announced that Ryan Seacrest would get a total of $45 million over the next three years (one for every unnecessarily pregnant pause, with a bonus dollar back every time he and Simon Cowell tear each other’s clothes off with their eyes). One report has it that Abdul is sick and tired of making “minimum wage”—a paltry $2 million or so a year—which, you know, is mere pennies considering all of the stardust-sprinkled poetry and public service announcements for Vicodin she contributes, near-singlehandedly saving the show from utter torpor once it dips into the actual “talented kids singing songs” portion of the season. Because she recognizes her self-worth, rumor has it she would prefer something more in “Are you fucking kidding? All you do is tell people they’re beautiful, and then you just babble about individuality and spirit like you spent the afternoon watching Oprah from inside a box of Franzia” territory, please.
Thankfully the same grassroots swell that ensured Iran finally got its democracy (that happened, right?) has risen around Abdul’s cause, with supporters taking to the streets of the Internet and holding the modern-day equivalent of wearing black armbands or sitting in at lunch counters: Randomly attaching “#KeepPaula” to their Twitter feeds, regardless of what they’re actually talking about. Do you hear the voices growing into a concerted roar, FOX executives? Have you begun to feel the earth move beneath your feet? They say that Americans have grown apathetic, but all it takes is the right cause to spark a revolution: Sure, you could blame it on the fact that networks are reporting near 50-percent losses, or that your once-fatted cash cow doesn’t have the same cachet it once did in the ratings—and that you’re probably about to take an even bigger dip in the heartland now that you almost gave the Coca-Cola crown to (gasp) a gay—but the fact remains that without Paula Abdul there to play undiscerning mommy, and ramble incoherently about "soul" like a Percocet-addled Pablo Neruda, American Idol would just be a canned talent competition full of major label ringers, where the judges will stick to their scripts and the only spontaneity will come from eternally unloved Kara It’sNot Delivery,It’sDiGiorno telling a contestant something maddening like, “You should have sung an old Motown tune—like Barry White" or whatever.
So we say give Abdul her money, and let her promote all the star-shaped jewelry she can fit on her increasingly gnarled fingers, because nothing is more important than validating her sense of self-worth. Never mind that every company in the nation is clinging tenaciously to its last dollar and that most television personalities are, by contrast, Roman boy emperors having pansexual orgies involving champagne enemas and using the common folk as cum-rags… We must have Paula Abdul’s inspiration! Would it help if everyone in America agreed to take a pay cut?