Idol Worship

American Idol starts in two phase. The first phase is the judges go to a select number of cities and listen to a bunch of performers. They get to go to Hollywood.

The performers usually fall into three categories: good to very good, not quite there, and awful.

You would like to believe that everyone that falls into good to very good gets to go to Hollywood, but I don't think that's the case.

For example, if you tried out, and you were an opera singer, a professional one, for that matter, and sang opera, out you'd go. Sorry, this is pop singing, not opera. And to that extent, folk singing is usually out, country singing is tolerated. Basically, your best chance to get in, for lack of a better phrase, is to sing "black" which means a lot of vibrato and extending out notes for a while.

Black singing is, in fact, so popular, that it has defined singing, at least, diva style singing. Thus, Celine Dion or Justin Timberlake, two fairly white individuals, sing in this style.

You aren't going to get people singing like Sufjan Stevens to make it on Idol.

Furthermore, there are folks that simply don't look the part. Every contestant that looks, for lack of a better word, inbred, i.e., not sexy, and indeed, far from sexy, has a bad voice. Why is that? Isn't it possible that one of these folks who don't look the part has a great voice?

It's possible, but I bet they never show them on TV. They don't want to admit to that kind of bias. Here's someone that's not attractive that would get voted out because looks matter and yet they have a great voice. Why don't they show these folks? Because they'd look bad, that's why.

So American Idol prefers that we laugh at these individuals who look and sing horribly, and implicitly tells the rest of the world that you have to look good, otherwise your talents are meaningless.

And that's a sad commentary about American Idol.

But no one much seems to care.