TELEVISION: At Last, Idoling America Votes Wisely

Along with millions of Americans, I was finally put out of my misery Thursday night. John Stevens, the courageous and minimally talented young man who pushed his way into the American Idol competition by singing Sinatra ballads, was finally voted off.

Maddeningly, John still managed to rack up four million votes. Four million votes. For those of you counting at home, that comes to about 4 percent of the total number of Americans who voted in the 2000 election, or just slightly more votes than Ralph Nader garnered nationwide in that year.

You might be wondering why I would write to all of you about television… let alone about reality TV. I have no excuse. I am hooked on American Idol. I'm hooked like people were hooked in the 70s and 80s on shows like "The Gong Show," "Hee-Haw," and of course "Star Search." The difference is, I'm not embarrassed to talk about it in public.

Sure, American Idol draws second-class talent sometimes. So what? Of course Randy and Simon are absolute nobodies who probably wouldn't know good music if it hit them. Fine by me. Yes, Paula Abdul has seen her time come and go (twice). I'm not bothered by it. I'll even concede that last year's runner up, Clay Aiken, will have a career lasting about as long as that tractor driver on the mall last year. Just long enough to be really annoying but probably not causing any permanent damage.

I concede all of this and don't care one bit. I am hooked. Just like the entire nation (or at least that portion of the nation that buys Coke, eats at Subway and drives hip new mini-Fords).

The thing is, American Idol is the perfect show for America. We all love competition, we love singers and we really love glam. Even if you don't watch American Idol regularly, or set your TiVo or VCR to record it twice a week, you can't help but have noticed that American Idol is the big thing. Even at my workplace, American Idol is all the rage at the water cooler, which we all seem to be spending more time at since WASA and the city conspired to poison our tap water.

It may be the latest sign the apocalypse is upon us, but I believe that American Idol is proof positive that Americans just love to vote. Don't believe me? Just spend 15 minutes on the Internet and see how many things you get to vote on: best news story, best fashions, best hair-dos, best gossip, etc. Even my beloved D.C. United has a "voting" section, where every week you can vote for the man of the match.

American Idol is just another in a long line of talent competitions, and not a great one at that, but it lets us vote, and damn it — we love to vote. Four million votes … for the loser. That must cause you to have the same chills I have. Four MILLION votes cast … for the loser. What politico in this town wouldn't die for that kind of interest in voting? On second thought, maybe they wouldn't be too interested in that kind of turnout.

But I don't vote. I don't do it. You know why? Because my vote doesn't count.

It doesn't count because I can't text message as fast as the `tweener girls who claw for their cell phones the second Ryan Seacrest's shrill voice ends the show with his now infamous "Seacrest … OUT!"

I don't have it in me to call the 1-800 number either. I've got other things to do after Idol, like eat or go to bed. So I, like millions of Americans, have chosen to sit by in agony and watch as a once-talented group of finalists has been reduced to a ragtag group of largely untalented, quasi-teen-idols, many of whom lack not only singing skills, but dancing skills as well.

There is hope for us non-voters though. This week the country (the "voting" element) corrected itself by finally sending home the last of the worst: John Stevens. After kicking off Jennifer Hudson last week in circumstances that conjured up images of a major conspiracy (the power was rumored to have gone out in her hometown during voting, among other things), the country has finally gotten it right.

We can all sleep a little easier this week, knowing that despite having leaded water in our homes, a rocky economy and troops dispatched all over the world, we have one less problem to deal with: John Stevens won't be our American Idol. §