MB Civic

By Eugene Robinson | Friday, May 26, 2006; A21 | The Washington Post
Let us briefly turn away from consequential matters of state — the $90,000 in ice-cold cash the FBI says it found in Rep. William Jefferson’s freezer, the donnybrook on Capitol Hill over immigration, the Bush administration’s latest delusional claims of light at the end of the Iraq tunnel — to consider “American Idol.”

Why? Because, as unseemly as it is to blow one’s own horn, I was right. Also, because the most interesting contestant won.

But first let’s get the “seriousness” question out of the way. Please hold the high dudgeon about how a cheesy television show isn’t sufficiently grim for op-ed pontification. An astounding 41 million viewers watched the last hour of Wednesday night’s over-the-top finale, in which supremely self-confident soul man Taylor Hicks was crowned this season’s Idol, beating out the ethereal siren Katharine McPhee. Here in Washington, protected refuge of the Great Furrowed Wonk and the Blue-Blazered Brainiac, viewership was reportedly higher than the national average. So don’t claim to be above it all, because you’re only fooling yourself.

Now, I’m sure you’re eager to get to the part about my having been right. We have to go all the way back to 2002 and the very first “American Idol” season. I hadn’t heard anything about the show, but I noticed that my two sons — one in college at the time, one in middle school — were watching and discussing it, so I sat with them one evening and checked it out. The next day I came into the office ranting about how this admittedly stupid amateur-hour show was going to be the biggest thing on television. My exquisitely cultured colleagues at The Post looked at me as if I were standing there naked except for a tinfoil hat to keep the CIA from controlling my brain waves.

There were a brave and prescient few who got it immediately, however — who saw that there was something special about the format, something insidious about how the show brought you into the lives of these young, unpolished singers, some of them incapable of ever being polished beyond the dullest glint. The evil geniuses behind the show somehow made you care who survived elimination to return next week and wring the neck of another unsuspecting ballad.

There weren’t many early adopters. I had to beg, plead, wheedle and cajole to get our Hollywood correspondent to do a proper story on “Idol” — and I was her boss. We “Idol” watchers were a furtive little underground, communicating by instant message. No one understood our pain when the deserving Tamyra was voted off instead of the talentless Justin. It was a lonely time.

But our numbers did grow, didn’t they? Fast-forward to the two-hour, season-ending extravaganza Wednesday at which legitimate, top-of-their-game stars such as Mary J. Blige — even Prince, His Royal Badness himself — consented to appear, along with genuine legends (Al Jarreau, Dionne Warwick, Burt Bacharach) and bizarre footnotes (Meat Loaf, to whom the years have not been kind). “Idol” has gone from uncool to a land beyond cool.

There’s only one thing that hasn’t gone according to plan in the Idol Empire’s campaign for world domination. “Idol” was supposed to produce pop stars — slick, packaged performers in the mold of a Britney Spears or a Justin Timberlake. So far it has minted exactly one — Kelly Clarkson, the first-season winner.

Of the other winners, Ruben Studdard is an overweight R&B stylist, Fantasia Barrino is a single mother with a raw, bluesy voice and Carrie Underwood is pure country. Now comes Taylor Hicks, a strikingly retrograde, pudgy, gray-haired soul singer who makes you think it’s 1966, not 2006.

So I do wonder whether there might be more of a market than radio programmers realize for unslick, unpackaged music. When America votes, that’s what it chooses.

By now doctoral dissertations are surely being written about “Idol,” and every newspaper in America must have run at least one ponderously analytical story about What It All Means — a veritable frenzy of earnest, serious-minded futility. (I’ve seen erudite references to Shakespeare and Wagnerian opera.) People, please, just stop. Trying to figure out what “American Idol” is telling us about our society is like trying to figure out what Paula Abdul is telling us about anything. Duh, it’s a diabolically clever television show that’s fun to talk about at the office the next morning. It’s a mindless escape. It’s good, cheesy fun.

Even in Washington, cheesy fun is allowed. Enjoy the break. Soon enough we’ll all be back to the humorless grind of running the world.