Agh I hate myself for doing this but I just have to point out one more thing cause it's bugging me. Idols recently fought the discriminatory practices by hotels against anything related bhangra (so teams, events, comps, etc). Can't say I blame the hotels though, they may lose repeat customers for one night of douchery by teams...but it's obviously not legal and Idols won. Woohoo Bhangra!
Out of that struggle though was their decision to not be in those situations in the first place, and therefore the stringent rules and subsequent punishment. This is obviously a message that Idols worked hard to put on the show and wont' tolerate shit. Spoke to someone (who shall remain anonymous) who informed me that some sponsors/elders were unhappy with the gesture and noticed it during the show. Many of us watched on live stream so we missed it but apparently watching live it was fairly obvious given his placement on stage. She phrased it to me this way, "they saw it on par with flipping the bird". I think that's a fair assessment, 'suck it' = 'fuck off'. Would people call it a childish thing if he flipped everyone off and yelled fuck you? Probably not, we might not equate them that way but the older sponsors did and that's the issue for Idols.
Would I have approached the public announcement differently? Sure, but I think both sides were emotional: i.e. if we give Sunny some deference (and we should, he DID apologize on his own accord and that says a lot) then we should give equal deference to an organization that took the Hilton to court and won for the Bhangra community. I can't fault them for trying to protect what they've built, even if I think they didn't handle it as clean as we might expect.
sorry sorry I know this shit is beaten down, but people are honestly just posting reactionarily and not thinking. It should have remained a non-issue and we should have been focusing on SGPD and NJ shouting TDot together. There was a really nice moment for the Bhangra community that got overshadowed by egos. Sunny is absolutely not unique (in that others might have acted same way), but I don't take that to mean his actions 'werent a big deal'...that means to me we should use the situation to inform dancers that their actions matter, not simply put them on blast. Everytime you act like a tool on stage you affect the competition's ability to draw sponsors. Everytime you trash a room or run around shouting in a hallway, you prevent the comp from finding hotels/venues. I've been on both sides, I've absolutely done the same things I'm highlighting, I've dealt with teams doing same thing I'm highlighting...I am not unique either. But, we should be better than the sum of our parts. I think Sunny's situation blew up too much, but rather than just posting 'omfg everyone calm down fucking fuck fuck waht the fuck' try thinking about why it happened and dont' put yourself in that situation.
err, definitely turned into a longer essay than I had hoped...sorry bout that. See ya'll at Burgh and Boston!