Dumb Voter Flu Pandemic Spreading Nationwide
There are many stupid things I could write about tonight.
Like the nauseating NIMBY ploy by Congressional Democrats who — pandering to irrational, xenophobic if not to say primeval fear– are blocking funding to close Gitmo.
Or perhaps the way the media has shamefully decided to offer such a wide platform for the feverish rantings of a washed-up, tin-pot, discredited gas bag like Newt Gingrich.
But instead, let me say a few words about American Idol (yes, obviously it is a stupid show. But that’s why I watch it). More precisely, a few words about the stupid, stupid way the vote went on the finale of this 8th season.
Holy Geez, these folks aren’t stupid. They’re idiots! The Dumbness Flu that broke out in California Tuesday is apparently spreading across country,
The talent gap between the two finalists, the white-bread, listless Kris Allen and the openly gay, semi-goth Adam Lambert was wider than the open space between Newt’s ears. Allen is at best a mediocre, totally safe and completely forgettable lump of nothing. Lambert is a screaming, smoking ball of passion and fire who can take any song and set it ablaze. This wasn’t even a close call. It was Lambert all the way.
And there is absolutely no question in my mind that he won strictly on a basis of cultural comfort. The audience wasn’t ready to crown a queer kid with black nail polish.
Just a small fact to keep in mind when some of us get impatient and start kidding ourselves that –politically– liberals would be stronger only if they were more liberal. A nice idea. But not necessarily in synch with reality.
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May 20th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Gasbag Gingrich – whose polling numbers were where Pelosi’s are now when he was…uh…at his most popular:
http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2009/05/oh-those-civil-republicans-heres-quip.html
May 20th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Like I said: there is hope…but not for us.
The screamin’ rocker would have won hands down in any other country.
May 20th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
reg, once again you suffer a severe disappoinment on American Idol – another gay guy lost. Adam lost to Kris, a normal person from Arkansas, and Clay Aiken previously lost to Ruben Studdard, a good guy from Birmingham.
You guys react the same way that you do on elections. If your man(?) doesn’t win, then the system is wrong.
The people spoke. A red stater beat a blue stater.
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On a different matter that we’re used to seeing replayed over and over in Atlanta, the King family is at it again. King family feud could derail film on rights leader
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reg, given your great sense of humor, check out this: LINK
May 20th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Yeah, it was pretty bad.
Lambert has charisma.
And talent.
Super lame vote.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
I never watched the show, but I’m looking at the photo of the two in that link. The not gay guy is better looking. The gay guy looks like a goon and a poser. I wonder if it wasn’t sexuality, but looks. THAT’s the bigger shame. Pretty people who can’t sing winning over ugos that can.
May 21st, 2009 at 12:29 am
Adam certainly has a voice that could make him the next front man for queen, but Kris had the entire state or Arkansas behind him and the hometown good looks which turned a million young girls’ heads.
Kris Allen – Heartless
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LkPS5bC1S4
The idea that the vote turned on Adam’s gayness, was summed up by one of his fans who lamented the fact that the talent stops here, he will never have kids. It really wasn’t an issue.
Adam Lambert Mad World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ50AuKQOyk
Yes Adam has a great voice and even Kris felt he should have won, which endears him more to his loyal fans, but the reality is that stardom is more that a just great voice.
If you compare Adam’s version of One to the Bono, who has a mediocre voice, Bono still comes out way on top.
Adam Lambert One by U2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIdVK8Xu8iI
U2 One(2003-06-21_Dublin Live)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq4Jh39KJ8U
May 21st, 2009 at 2:32 am
Marc,
Arrrggghh. I’m so glad you blogged about this. (I blogged about jails and the budget. Not nearly as satisfying.)
Chris was perfectly delightful and all (and held up his end surprisingly well in We Are the Champions), but Adam Lambert blew the doors off with intensity, charisma and vocals that stood up brilliantly to those of Freddy Mercury, one of the best front men pop music ever produced.
Okay, yeah, it’s only a talent show, but it does point beyond itself—and not in a good way.
May 21st, 2009 at 3:02 am
P.S.
If there was any doubt about Adam Lambert’s ability to interpret a song (which there wasn’t), it was dispelled Tuesday night when he was asked to sing Sam Cook’s nearly mythic classic of the civil rights movement, A Change is Gonna Come. It seemed like a terrible mistake to ask the California white boy to sing it.
Then he sang it. And everything changed. Suddenly the song had a new meaning.
http://tinyurl.com/ocordk
May 21st, 2009 at 5:06 am
I listened to the link that Celeste provided. The performance was quite good. However, the vote was more than who sang the best. You can get judges for that. This was about whom millions of Americans wanted to win for a variety of reasons.
Also, any guy who can hit those high notes must have had part of his body cut off.
May 21st, 2009 at 5:30 am
I know he’s being flippant, but someone should explain what falsetto is to Woody.
May 21st, 2009 at 7:43 am
Woody – your knowledge of and fascination with American Idol, which I never watch – literally never heard of either of these guys until I scanned Marc’s post – explains why Marc is complaining about the low intelligence, bad taste and moral vacuity of that show’s audience. If only the only place you voted was on that silly show…and if Marc’s right you’re not qualified even for that.
May 21st, 2009 at 7:47 am
Also have to say that I think it’s hilarious that Pokey seems expert on this issue.
May 21st, 2009 at 7:49 am
Not to seem obsessive here or anything, but Pokey, you can’t compare Adam Lambert to Bono, it isn’t apples to apples. It would need to be to someone like Steven Tyler or David Bowie, or the aforementioned Freddy Mercury.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33ROaNpi4vQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sogKUx_q7ig
May 21st, 2009 at 7:51 am
Pokey – “the reality is that stardom is more that a just great voice”
Which is why you’re doing cartwheels over some young kid on American Idol – an idiotic TV show – and, I’ll wager, have never heard of Betty Lavette – who is the most compelling R&B singer currently working.
Your loss.
May 21st, 2009 at 7:57 am
If this Adam Lambert kid is in the same league as Steve Tyler – who has had, in Jagger’s wake, one of the most pointless, redundant, careers as a poseur in the history of pop music – I’m not mourning the possibility that we’ll never hear of him again.
May 21st, 2009 at 8:09 am
I’m not trying to act “holier than thou” because I can’t watch American Idol – I watched “24″ this season which was about the stupidest series season yet for a show that wasn’t cancelled after it’s first 13 episodes. It’s just that I’m too fucking picky about good music to watch a the kind of crap that – from the youtube clips and occasional channel-surfing moments I’ve seen – is about 95% painful to watch except as some kind of weird sport. The presence of that ex-Lakers cheerleader whose name I can’t recall and the meanspirited, narcissistic Brit twit is reason enough from my own particular perspective to pass on it. Even a Jennifer Hudson – who I liked in the Dreamgirls movie – isn’t someone whose CD I’d ever consider buying. (Unless Jerry Wexler came back from the dead and produced an album for her.)
May 21st, 2009 at 8:13 am
Come to think of it, wasn’t Jennifer Hudson the “loser” on American Idol when she was on ? Not sure about this, but I think so.
May 21st, 2009 at 8:19 am
Oh, that’s as ridiculous as, say, the 1910 Fruitgum Company (1, 2, 3 Redlight) beating out Jimi Hendrix (All Along the watch Tower). Wait a minute, that happened in 1968, the year of the revolution.
Ain’t this America
May 21st, 2009 at 8:26 am
Hudson was the “loser” on AI.
Kinda got revenge by winning the Oscar for Dreamgirls, in which she was awesome.
May 21st, 2009 at 10:44 am
Read a piece (yesterday I think) where the prediction was made – Kris Allen by way of the southern vote.
IMO – by the time Idol is down to ten or twelve – any one of them could win. The fact that only one does win really doesn’t diminish the others as “losers”
i.e. The Boston Marathon – one winner doesn’t make all who ran “losers”
May 21st, 2009 at 11:09 am
Incidentally, if anyone missed Dick Cheney’s security speech today at AEI, it’s my understanding that the key excerpts are going to be featured in a Depends ad to be aired this week on Larry King and Bob Schieffer’s shows.
May 21st, 2009 at 11:28 am
More on what Americans like and dislike:
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/05/cheneys-popularity-in-context.php
May 21st, 2009 at 2:37 pm
“in a Depends ad to be aired this week”
I almost messed my Depends . . .
lol
May 21st, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I agree with capt on this. When you get down to the last few finalists, hard to say anyone winds up a loser. The top finalists all wind up with record deals. Adam has far more vocal talent in terms of skill, range, and vocal power, and it’s important to remember how many millions voted and kept him at the top, regardless of his goth look and the guy-on-guy action. I think that speaks very well for the youth.
Oh, by the way Woody, the good guy from Raleigh [you accidentally forgot to mention his southern roots out of everyone] Clay Aiken’s first record outsold the “normal” winner. Maybe the system works after all.
May 21st, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Which is why you’re doing cartwheels over some young kid on American Idol – an idiotic TV show – and, I’ll wager, have never heard of Betty Lavette – who is the most compelling R&B singer currently working.
While I’m more of a Shemekia Copeland fan, your point is well taken. I watched a little of season one and had enough. The premise that somone like Paula Abdul could judge anyone’s singing – as if she could ever sing – doomed the legitimacy of the show from the start IMHO.
So much of contemporary pop is production. If you can’t sing with just piano bass and drums behind, you can’t sing. If you can’t interpret a song lyric without layering it in all that crappy melisma, then find another line of work. Carmen McRae refused to sing Send in the Clowns until someone explained to her that’s what was done at circuses when disasters happen.
On the subject of melisma, by the way, if Whitney Houston ever completes rehab, gets sober and revives her career, she, along with Mariah Carey, she be taken out and slapped before she sings another note.
May 21st, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Left-Wingey hatred of the American public must always find a target, especially when the Defeatocrats rule Congress and a knee-jerk Left-Winger occupies the White House.
So, the problem du jour is that the marginally more talented Goth fag lost to the bland mainstream prettier hetero boy.
Both of these guys are in severe bad taste, of course.
May 21st, 2009 at 11:39 pm
For full disclosure, I do not get broadcast or cable TV, for about a year now.
I lost my job last January and got rid of the cable shortly after as a cost cutting measure.
Now we don’t miss it now.
August 28th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Nice but i think something is missing.
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