Show Us Your Woe - NYTimes.com IN the service of what I'm about to write, an admission I'm loath to make: I watch "The Voice." It gets worse. I watch "American Idol," too. Not whole seasons. Not even whole episodes. If I may brag a little, no one can fast-forward like I can, compressing two recorded hours of "The Voice" into 34 minutes and the "Idol" finale on Thursday night into about 19, including the pauses to top off my Chablis and brush the cracker crumbs from my comforter. But I've experienced enough of these shows to know that they're not merely singing competitions. They're misery competitions. Bad-luck bake-offs. I'll see you your high school expulsion, and I'll raise you my stint in rehab. I've experienced enough of them, in other words, to feel the onset of hardship fatigue, and changing the channel to CNN or MSNBC doesn't bring relief. Candidates for elective office tell us not just how high they've climbed but how high they've climbed against all odds, as if that's the only way accomplishment really means anything; as if survival itself confers great merit on the survivor; as if the bleak shall inherit the earth. There's a vivid streak of this in history, from Abe Lincoln's log home to Bill Clinton's turbulent one. But it seems more florid now. The economy's stubborn funk has ratcheted up our suspicion of perks and privileges and our support for underdogs, to a point where we're less taken with what people have achieved than with what they've endured. In politics and in prime time, the contestants with the most traction are frequently the contestants with the gravest trials: afflictions, addictions, lost loves, lost dogs. I'm kidding about the canines, but only slightly. If there aren't any epic setbacks in your biography, your political consultants or your "Voice" producers will find and amplify whatever garden-variety sorrows do exist. They're like divining rods for tears, Yo-Yo Ma's of the heartstrings. That's surely why a sort of weariness and skepticism was the response among a few New Yorkers I know to last week's revelations by Christine Quinn, the mayoral candidate, that she'd struggled with bulimia and alcoholism. They've grown so inured to the process of public figures rummaging through the past for hard knocks that they greet it in a jaded fashion, wondering how to tell the real aches from the exaggerated ones. Fetishized misfortune - hardship porn - has numbed them. That's the biggest problem with it. It equates and mashes everything into one sentimental mush, cheapening uncommon suffering by showcasing it alongside the rest. It bends all life stories into identical arcs, no matter how different those stories are. Think back to the Republican convention in Tampa, where so many speakers peddled similar tales of heroic forebears and humble origins that genuinely inspirational narratives were lost in the clutter. One moment, Tim Pawlenty was talking about the early death of his mother, when he was just 16; another moment, Rand Paul was reaching back generations to tell the audience: "My great-grandfather, like many, came to this country in search of the American dream. No sooner had he stepped off the boat than his father died. Ann Romney remembered the basement apartment and tuna casseroles that she and Mitt once shared in a voice not unlike Condoleezza Rice's when she flashed back to her Birmingham girlhood in the Jim Crow era. Everyone's come a long way! Marco Rubio had by then already revised his family's saga, because he'd been getting it wrong, claiming that his parents had fled Castro's Cuba when they'd initially left years before he seized power. When you enter the hardship sweepstakes, you tend to overreach. And anyone who can get in the game does. Democratic and Republican strategists alike crow about what "a great story" a candidate has, meaning that it includes great challenges, which are seen as the handiest routes to rendering the candidate "relatable." Heidi Heitkamp, the Democratic senator from North Dakota, was toughened by breast cancer, Elizabeth Warren by waiting tables at 13 and Paul Ryan by waking up one morning when he was still in high school and finding his father dead in bed. Those aren't just anecdotes that flit by. They're foundational ordeals, mentioned incessantly. And that suggests another problem with hardship porn: its insinuation that surmounting obstacles equals acquiring real character, which is ostensibly impossible without tough times. Romney was punished by this thinking; that's why Ann took the oratorical tack she did. But I know strong, empathetic people who haven't weathered anything much more distressing than a hangnail, and I know jerks who are graduates of garish travails. Hardship isn't necessarily the crucible in which virtue is formed. Sometimes it's just hardship, sad and unenviable, and the man or woman on the far side of it is exactly who he or she was before: kindly or cruel, brave or timid. I care less about Heitkamp's grit in the face of disease than about her cowardice in the face of gun-control legislation, which she voted against. I care less about how quickly Ryan was forced to grow up than about how unyielding he can be on certain social and fiscal issues, and what I want to know from Quinn is how she'll improve the city's schools and give its kids a real chance. I can marvel at Olympic athletes" dominance without the hardscrabble back stories, presented in three minutes of gauzy footage, scored to bathetic music, that speak not just to the sacrifices they made but to the despair that almost swallowed them. In a "Voice" or "Idol" contestant, I prefer perfect pitch to perfect heartbreak. These shows, like other elimination competitions, are clapping, stomping tributes to obstacles surmounted and pain sloughed off - "Dancing Queen for a Day" - and they have an astonishing knack for attracting talent under true duress. Last season's "Idol" winner, Phillip Phillips, performed through kidney stones; this season's runner-up, Kree Harrison, has already lost both her parents. Over on "The Voice," there's nary a sick relative unmentioned or rotten break unplumbed, and contestants are forever stifling sobs. The show, trying to one-up the best of "Idol," insists on it. Until about two weeks ago, I was mystified by how Judith Hill, the seeming front-runner on "The Voice" this season, had survived the screening process, given her good fortune. She's already sung professionally with Michael Jackson and her helicopter parents are always near, beaming and applauding. Then she shared a secret: she was rehabilitating a "scary" node on her vocal cords. Hardship! When she hit her high notes that night, it wasn't just a feat of artistry. It was a triumph over adversity.