American Idol Revisited

After watching American Idol results show last night, I am once again shaking my head in disbelief that Sanjaya was not in the bottom 3. I now suspect that there is a conspiracy at work here. Let's face it, Sanjaya is the least talented of all of the contestants, yet every week he avoids the bottom 3. While Sanjaya may not have talent going for him, he does have a few other things, and let's face it, American Idol is not purely based on talent. Looks, stage presence, and personality all go a long way in making a candidate popular with the public. And while Sanjaya may be low on the talent totem pole, he is undenyably cute, so he probably appeals to teenage girls. While his sexual orientation isn't up for debate here, there's no denying that the liklihood of him being gay, of all the other male contestants, is pretty high, therefore he probably has the gay vote, and thus the in-the-closet teenage boy vote. And given that he's soft spoken and mild mannered, he probably appeals to all of those teenegers' moms, too.

So ok, that's a lot of votes, but how can someone so clearly out of his league be so popular in a competition where a diverse population votes for their favourite Idol? At the risk of pissing off the whole population of India, I submit that the only logical conclusion lies in the fact that he's the first American Idol contestant who is an American of Indian descent. With so many Indian call centers having the ability to make calls to the USA for next to nothing, it doesn't seem like a coincidence that the least talented person in the competition is getting a very high number of votes. In fact, Sanjaya had the 4th highest vote tally of the 12 boys in the competition, according to Ryan Seacrest.

I could be completely off, and perhaps the better theory is that the demographic who take the time to actually vote is predominantly teenage girls, gay teenage boys, and soccer moms. I, myself, have never voted, and I know most of my friends have not. I suppose instead of complaining about the results I should contribute to swaying the balance by actually picking up the phone.

I heard a rumour that Simon Cowel has said he'll resign if Sanjaya wins. Come on, America! Simon is one of the biggest reasons we all watch this show. His rude comments and bluntness make an otherwise boring talent show highly entertaining. Do you really want to risk losing that? So now I'm launching my "Save Simon" campaign. Please, everybody who never votes, pick up the phone and vote for anybody other than Sanjaya.

SAVE SIMON!

Do it for me :-)