The American Idle Redux

It's become fashionable, almost de rigueur, for the media to bash American Idol. Critics are falling all over themselves finding condescending things to say about the favorites, and ripping into the less likely to be winners like jackals feasting on offal. The whipping boy this year is poor Sanjaya Malakar who, even though he doesn't attain the musical heights of a Don Ho, seems like a very nice boy and does sing on key. Remember, this is the same industry that made a singing idol out of Sal Mineo, who confessed to me once he couldn't sing a note and took the whole thing as a big joke. But the point of American Idol is not the singers, nor creating an instant star. Notice how all previous winners have totally disappeared from our national cultural radar. The main interest is the ancillary drama, Paula and Simon snarling and snapping at each other, the emotional crash and burn of the losers, the off-screen pecadilloes of the contestants, and now Sanjaya, who is being treated as if his only motive for being there is to deliberately upset the purity of the competition by mocking the proceedings with what critics say is his unrelenting awfulness, not to mention his new definition of bad hair day. But the real point of it all is selling stuff, and for this the network and media are joined in a frontal attack on anything remotely resembling quality.