Idle and Idol

I've reached that point in the term when grading and preparations for lecture accumulate rather maddeningly and, hence, among other thing, blogging is taking a bit of a backseat for now. Sorry about that. A quick comment from left field about American Idol is obviously in order. I have a real weakness for Reality TV shows, but this weakness is exacerbated to near epic proportions at times like this when my work becomes especially burdensome. Work Out and Ninja Warrior and Ultimate Fighter and Idol become something like the soundtrack in the background while I grade exams and endlessly assemble lecture notes and so on.

Anyway, for those of you watching Idol -- am I the only one who had the uncanny sense that a Transporter malfunction has brought us a Sanjaya from the Mirror Universe to perform last night? The goatee, the manic gleam in his eye? I'm just saying. And speaking of Sanjaya: I disapprove of both the Sanjaya haters as well as those whose "love" of Sanjaya is packaged as an expression of aristocratic kitsch (just stop lying) or a stealthy repudiation of the whole Idol franchise (just stop watching).

Certainly I agree that Sanjaya is a laughably weak singer and rather underconfident performer, but it seems to me a straightforward lie to pretend any of the other guys in the competition this season are any better than he is (there is no Elliott Yamin in this pack of dull doughy mediocrities). The desperation with which the judges lather on about the talent and sex appeal of every boy but Sanjaya reflects how curiously out of touch they are with America as it actually is, or at any rate is quickly coming to be. Sanjaya is the "cutest" guy on the show, as these things seem to be reckoned, and he looks like America actually looks. Given his relative talentlessness on top of everything else I would venture to say Sanjaya manages to reflect America back at itself rather richly, as it happens, and in more ways than one, much of its charm as well as some of its awfulness.

Judges and punditocrats can laugh at his soft-spokeness and deride him as a girly-man and pretend his anemic little jabs at sartorial eccentricity are unfathomably crazy and all the rest but the truth is America simply isn't as homophobic or racist or cheerfully imperialist as the producers of American Idol seem to be deep down in their icy hearts and until they grasp this they will fail to grasp the success of Sanjaya. (Of course this Sanjaya saga could all be a faux controversy to whomp up ratings for a tired franchise, akin to Simon and Paula going interminably through the motions of flirtation and lovers spatting, or Simon and Ryan going through precisely the same motions just as uninterestingly.)

All that said, the women on the show are incomparably better than the guys, and Melinda Doolittle is obviously the one who deserves to win (even if the deer caught in the headlights schtick with which she inevitably faces down applause and praise is really getting tired).