Last week’s American Idol results show, replete with the expanding Kelly Clarkson and the insipid Kanye West both hawking new CDs, was the end of the road for little, lovely Jasmine and handsome, smiling Jorge. No great loss in either case, but little Jasmine was quite pretty. Fortunately, the voters kept Megan Joy and Alexis Grace around for another week. Mouse needs his eye candy.
The “Judges’ Save” was introduced as a safety net measure for preventing the repeat of such erstwhile early exit travesties as Chris Daughtry and Jennifer Hudson. Judges will get to save one, single contestant who is eliminated by the popular vote during the finals. They must confer during one of the commercials and their decision must be unanimous. This is like George W. Bush losing in the popular vote, but the Supreme Court of the United States declared him a winner, anyway. (I’m getting a great kick out of myself here.) Anyhow, assuming that the public knocks out someone whom the judges feel to be worthy of continuing, they can make the save—just once. Alas, the judges unanimously chose not to save either the weeping Jasmine or the pragmatic Jorge.
This gives the judges a raison d’être for the finals. Otherwise, they have no real purpose, other than to provide inane commentary and inimical diatribe (in Simon’s case) after each performance, the whole of which carries no weight at all.
I think they ought to implement an analogous procedure called “The Judges’ 86.” This would allow the judges to confer and unanimously boot an unworthy contestant such as Season 6’s Sanjaya Malakar, even if an asshole with a huge following, such as Howard Stern, for example, tries to manipulate the popular voting to make a mockery of the show, which does quite well in making a mockery of itself without his help!
The Redhead just pointed out to this Mouse that this year, like other years, we have a subplot about which Christianophobes can assert conspiracy theories. Some contestants have religion and other believers vote for them because of it, perhaps unfairly to the other contestants who are not religious. Like, duh! This is news only to those who wish to make it news. The American Idol voting public is motivated by things other than talent? No kidding! It’s a popularity contest, any way you slice it, and common interests, good looks, a decent personality, and, perhaps, a desire to punish other contestants will get the votes over ability anytime—just like presidential politics. But I digress.
This week is Grand Ole Opry Week. So, we can look forward to Carrie Underwood, the most successful Idol thus far, hawking yet another album on the results show. Good thing she stopped dating Tony Romo or she wouldn’t have time to do all this. She would be busy indulging him about how bad the Cowboys suck and what a dick T.O. really is. Anyway, we’ll also get to hear how these contestants handle country music. We’ll see just how versatile they is!
