On TV: America's got talent? Not in the early rounds

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America may have talent, but you'd never know it by watching the early rounds of “America's Got Talent.”

Since when is shaking your belly fat on national TV a talent? Or singing a song so off-key it makes Roseanne Barr's infamous screechy version of the national anthem in 1990 sound like Beverly Sills at the Metropolitan Opera House?

The first few rounds are nothing more than pathetic attempts by attention seekers to get noticed. The simply “bad” performers don't make the cut. It's the horrendous ones, who are willing to look like fools and embarrass themselves on national TV, who make it to the televised rounds. Their parents and/or children must be so proud.

Granted, as we learned on one recent broadcast, not all of us can bite down on an apple so hard we knock our jaws out of whack and need paramedics to unlock them. That tells you something about the inanity of the competition, when they require emergency medical personnel on hand during the performances.

I don't recall Arthur Godfrey having an EMT standing backstage during his “Talent Scouts” show.

In her defense, the poor girl with the apple needed to hang onto it for dear life as her partner (the sane one of the pair?) carved his initials into it with a chain saw. That's not a talent; it's a death wish!

This is not so much a talent showcase as a test of Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest theory. Regrettably, the hypothesis fails, as it is often the dumber acts that move on. Apparently, Darwin's theory does not apply to reality programming at all, as instead of dwindling down to eventual extinction, they just keep multiplying at a distressing rate.

How these shows continue to exist when the dodo bird has long since vanished is beyond me.