American Idol: Did Anyone Get the Plates on That Tragedy?

American Idol
Title: "Lowest Vote-Getter Among the 11 Finalists Is Eliminated"
First Aired: 3/21/07
Fool me once, America, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Fool me like 16 times on national TV, and shame on all of your cold, mindless corpses!

Yep, you guessed it. Last night's results show came and went, and Sanjaya Malakar is still alive and kicking. One of my favorites, however, is not.

After 30 million votes, 19-year-old Stephanie Edwards is gone with the wind. Adios! Sayonara! Have fun spending the rest of your life feeling almost as talented as the second-lowest vote-getter, Chris Richardson!

So, how would you like your cyanide, Ms. Edwards? Shaken? Stirred? Dipped on the end of a very long sword? I don't blame you. You were not the the least talented person on stage (and I'm including Peter Noone and Brad Garrett!).

No, the least talented person has a trick up his sleeve...

It's called the power of mob mentality. Or, as certain pundits like to call it, the "miracle of technology."

You can't sling a dead mouse these days without running across Sanjaya Malakar's name on the Internet. Whether it be votefortheworst.com -- the enormously popular effort to bring American Idol to its knees -- or blogs like these whose writers can't watch Sanjaya without puking in our mouths a little bit, the talentless boy has become a cause celebre.

This, more than anything, is proof that this season, Idol's producers may have to resort to some truly underhanded tactics to insure that they don't get stuck giving a big ol' recording contract to the sexless wonder. What could they do to prevent this fiasco, do you suppose?

The only possibility that makes sense would be dub over Sanjaya's voice with someone who can actually sing. He'd be sure to get voted off posthaste! America would hate that ethnic boy with talent (ask Paul Kim and AJ Tabaldo), you can count it. As it is now, they have no problem making a fool of him in front of the whole country. And it's only going to get worse.

Come on, people. You can see it in Sanjaya's eyes every week. He wants to be voted off! As he said before this week's performance, "I know I'm not the best singer in this competition."

Doesn't that sound like rock-star confidence to you? Keep it up, America. You're doing great!

Next week's victim is sure to be another semi-surprise, with the only sure thing becoming Malakar's continued safety. Still, I would look out for big performances from Lakisha Jones and Chris Sligh next week, as they are both starving (zing!) to get their names back in the headlines.