Why I Vote Sanjaya

Because I hate American Idol, that's why. I don't watch the show but I do watch a lot of what comes on after it and lately I've been trying to catch the last couple minutes of the show to get the call-in number for Sanjaya so I can flash / redial twenty or so times. Why would I vote on a show I hate for a guy everyone hates? Because it is funny to piss off the Idol fans and because maybe getting stuck contracting this guy will convince the backers to cancel the show. Then House won't get preempted for weeks at a time, msnbc won't devote an entire section of their site to the show, my news sites will stop headlining Idol news over actually pertinent world events, and Simon Cowell will stop making news for being such an asshole.

I don't care if Ryan Seacrest is gay or not. I don't care if Paula cries. I don't care who slept with whom or whose naked pics got posted where or who showed up last night to mentor the contestants. And if the show didn't monopolize the collective consciousness so much I wouldn't care if it ran for next 50 years. But it does garnish way more attention than it warrants and I'm sick of hearing about it and seeing clips every time I turn on the computer or TV.

Randy Jackson punctuating every sentence with the word Dawg, Paula telling legions of tone-deaf hopefuls that they deserve to go to Hollywood when even they seem to know they don't, Simon being needlessly cruel to people just for trying, and Ryan making fun of Simon's breast tissue. Why is this taking the market's share four or five or however many nights a week? And why do people still show up to audition?!

I have seen enough of the auditions while channel surfing to know that the most horrific singers try out. I'm not talking about people who are pitchy (what the hell does THAT mean?) but the truly bad. The kind of people who are asked to keep it down during hymn-time at church. The sort of people who make Roseanne's version of the national anthem sound good. Why do they go? Even good singers get torn into by Simon, so what would motivate anyone to put themself into the firing line?

I'll tell you who: idiot attention-whores. The same people who jump up and down with banners trying to get Al Roker's attention in sub-freezing temperatures at 6 AM. The people who press their face to the glass behind the network morning show hosts hoping to get their squashed features on television for 15 seconds. So now we put them on the air. It's not the attention whores willing to jump over a gorge or eat a giant cockroach anymore; now all they have to do is butcher a Whitney Houston song. No, I can't sing. I sound like a dying alley-cat when I do. But I have more dignity than to try out for a televised talent show. And I have more self-respect than to basically walk up to Simon Cowell and ask to be ripped to shreds. Why are we rewarding people with no dignity or self-respect, and preempting House to do it?

So, if the American Idol fans are going to monopolize the media, monopolize conversations every day all over the US, and monopolize time slots that could be better served by almost any other television show, I am going to do my best to make sure they get Sanjaya every week. Sanjaya in all of his wild-haired tone-deaf glory. Sanjaya, dream-twink to millions, winning the recording contract. What could be better than that?