The Fingerman

Washington Post Sports Watch #1: Swimming World Championships

2011-07-24T14:32:00.003-04:00

In certain ways the coverage the Washington Post sports section gives D.C. sports fans (when you combine both what's available online with what's in the print edition) is better than ever. The blogs devoted to each of the professional teams gives readers much more information, and in a much more timely fashion, than we ever got a few years ago - before blogs, etc. And Dan Steinberg's D.C. Sports Bog is essential reading for any local sports fan--and if you don't know why, you're obviously aren't reading him. Yet, as the Post overall has deteriorated in recent years because of the Internet, staff cuts and bad management, the Sports section, especially the print edition, has had a similar downward trajectory in many ways--missing certain stories, running a number of boring or contentless columns by their supposedly superstar columnists, editing errors and a number of other strange decisions that I intend to regularly catalogue in this space. Today, though, I want to start by praising the Post for sending a reporter to Shanghai to cover the World Swimming Championships this week. I know some sports fans don't agree, but I love the Olympics and while I can't say I regularly follow swimming, track and field, etc. in Olympic off years, I do enjoy reading about (and occasionally watching on TV) the world championships in those sports every couple of years. I imagine that other than the New York Times and Sports Illustrated, there are hardly any other mainstream publications that sent anyone to China to cover this event.

So what's my problem? Actually, there are two. First is a problem that increasingly is an issue at the Post in general--the cuts in editors has led to paper just missing things that shouldn't be missed. The preview of the Swimming Championships today in the Post is the featured article on the front of the Sports section, with huge pictures and taking up most of the front page (on a morning when the Nats were on the West Coast and the only other sports news in the possible end of the NFL lockout, that's fine.) And yet neither in the "Sports on the Air" listings of TV sports broadcasts today nor anywhere or around the article on the World Swimming Championships is there any mention that the Swimming Worlds are actually being broadcast for two hours on NBC on Sunday? Why not? I have no idea--since the channel listings and times frequently accompany articles on other major sporting events in the Post. Does the person who edits the sports on TV listings not look at the TV grid in the Post's TV Week publcation, where it is listed? I hope not. Did NBC just not send out a press release that they were broadcasting this event? Perhaps, but I doubt it. I don't really no the reason, but it seems inexcusable to me--if you consider the World Swimming Championships important enough to send a reporter to China, you'd think someone, when putting together the piece, might have taken five minutes to say, "Hey, we sure this isn't on TV somewhere? Doesn't NBC cover this kind of thing a lot?"

The other thing that astonishes me about the Post's coverage of the World Swimming Championships is the fact that they sent a reporter all the way to China to cover this event and yet they couldn't send a reporter to cover ANY of the seven games in the Stanley Cup Finals (and three of those games were in Boston.) The Post has said before that part of their coverage decisions are based on TV ratings--well, trust me, even if the Post had promoted the NBC coverage of the World Championships today, they're still going to have a much smaller TV audience than the Stanley Cup Finals did. And considering Washington right now is a city where the hockey team is the second most popular team in the city, it seems odd that it would say it couldn't afford covering the championship of the NHL which took place in North America but could cover an event half a world away that lasts a week. Like I said, I'm fine with the Post wanting to cover the Swimming Worlds, I just don't understand how they can't cover any games in the Stanley Cup Finals.

I'll continue to cover these puzzling decisions in future blog posts.

Will someone wake up the Washington Post's sports columnists and tell them the Caps are a good story?

2011-04-05T18:45:00.007-04:00

One of my favorite topics to blog about over the years has been the Washington Post's hockey coverage--because not many people really care about it, even fewer also blog about it (one of the guys at On Frozen Blog, but that's about it) but also because no one pays more attention to it than me. (That's not necessarily a good thing or particularly healthy, but it's just the truth and I can't help it.)

The day-to-day beat coverage of the Caps and the placement of stories on days after games--and features on off-days--is fine and I have no complaint about that. My problem is with the columnists at the Post, who seem to have abandoned the Caps as the team spent the last month and a half going from a group in disarray to a red-hot team that looks like it may have a decent shot at making waves in the playoffs. Sounds like a good story that a sports columnist would be interested in, doesn't it?

And yet somehow there have been FOUR TIMES as many columns written about the Nats in the last month and a half than about the Caps, even though the Nats didn't play their first game of the season until this past Thursday. Now I like the Nats, I follow the Nats and I read most of those columns. But Tom Boswell, the most senior and best Post sports columnist, wrote 13 columns about the Nats since spring training started (including a couple containing such ridiculous optimism about the team that I think family members of Nats players made fun of them.) I know there's a romanticism about spring training, but that's a lot of columns about practice. In that same time period, he wrote one about the Caps (to be fair, it was a good one.) He wrote the same number of columns about the Orioles in that time period.

(By the way, all these column numbers are approximate, because the Post's new website is so bad and hard to use that every columnist archive either was impossible to find or was missing columns that I remembered reading.)

So you say, did other columnists pick up the slack on the Caps while Boswell was delirious from sun poisoning in Florida? Actually, not really. Jason Reid, who just became a columnist in February and is already pretty good, went down to Florida and has written three columns already about the Nats (including a really good one Saturday about the change at the catching position). His tally of Caps columns since he began: zero. (He has written a few about the Wizards.)

How about Tracee Hamilton? The count on her from mid-February to now was three Wizards columns, three Nats columns and two Caps columns. Mike Wise has written no columns about the Caps since...I'm not sure, but not since Presidents' Day. John Feinstein wrote one in mid-Februrary, and went back to college basketball (which is fine, because that's his specialty, although he probably knows the most about hockey of all the sports columnists.) And finally, there's Sally Jenkins, who I don't think has written about hockey since the 1990s.

I'm sure if the Post editors were reading this, they would point to Tarik El-Bashir's "On Hockey" column as a substitute for Boswell, et. al. El-Bashir, who was formerly the Caps beat writer and now covers Georgetown basketball, knows a lot about hockey and his columns are always interesting and often deal with strategy, important issues within the team or how a particular player is doing. But half of them don't even appear in the print edition of the sports section. (Yeah, I know, at 40, I'm just about the youngest person that actually still reads the print edition, but let's face it: If a sports column doesn't appear in the print edition, it means the editors don't consider it as important as all the articles that did make it to print.) And as I said earlier, the Post web site is such a mess lately, it's pretty easy to miss stuff these days--I almost missed El-Bashir's web-only column last week because I'd been busy that day and hadn't had time to check the Caps Insider blog where it was linked until I was on my way to the game.

What makes me even more upset about this is all the great column ideas that any editor or columnist should be able to come up with but that aren't being written. There's the mystery of Alex Ovechkin (why did he have such a mediocre first four and a half months of the season and then all of a sudden look like himself again?). There's the mystery of Alex Semin (is any local athlete as mystifying, both in the ups and downs of his play and his refusal to ever be interviewed in English? Can someone follow him around for a day and see if he insists on speaking Russian to the woman behind the deli counter at Giant?) There's the mystery of the Caps' new defensive system (what exactly are they doing that's so different?) There's the mystery of the Caps goalie situation (there are a lot of fans who think the Caps' best goalie is currently playing in Hershey.) And then there's the obvious story for the last week of the season: Who should the Caps want to play in the first round of the playoffs? Who should they not want to play? I've heard hosts on sports radio lead discussions on this topic--the Post can't dive in?

The Post has certainly made some progress in their coverage of the Caps over the past few years--Dan Steinberg, of course, does some great feature stuff on the Caps, from Ovechkin getting pictures with Michelle Obama to why Baltimore is into the Caps. And I'm sure in the playoffs, we'll get some more Caps features from the Post and regular columns. But if the columnists aren't following the team during the year, are they going to have any idea what's going on when they have to write about the team in the playoffs when it matters? I guess we'll see when the playoffs start next week, but the paper's performance these past few months doesn't give me hope.

So we're down to one?

2011-03-07T22:27:00.002-05:00

As far as my Jew-counting project on American Idol goes, last week was a week John Galliano would have loved. Of the four possible Jews left on American Idol, all but one were eliminated--and the one's that left is the one whose suspected Jewish heritage I'm most unsure about.

First of all, Rachel Zevita, she of the Hamsa necklace in the auditions, was eliminated after singing a very strange version of Fiona Apple's "Criminal" (like Randy Jackson, I didn't figure out what the song was until it was nearly over.) I did love when she threw off the cape, though, think she had a cool voice and was kind of interesting--but I can't blame America for not voting her through because her actual performance wasn't very good.

Brett Loewenstern, who seemed pretty Jewish, also didn't make it to the second round after singing "Light My Fire" and flipping his hair a lot. I think he probably would have been entertaining as a finalist and wasn't bad--but he had no chance of winning the whole thing, so it wasn't that big a deal.

Finally, there was Robbie Rosen, who actually had an article in the New York Post about him entitled something like "Could He Be the First Jewish American Idol?" The answer is no, not only because he isn't one of the 13 finalists, but also, as my former coworker Anne wrote, "Robbie Rosen was never going to win American Idol." Why? Because his voice wasn't that great and, as far as I'm concerned, he sang too slow. After a mediocre version of "Angel" on Tuesday night, he did get picked as one of the wild card performers, and listening to him sing "Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word," it sounded like every word was the hardest word for him--because it took him so long to get through the song with all his vocal runs, etc. It became annoying. But I'm sure he's a nice young man.

So all we've got left is Casey Abrams, who has to be considered a favorite with his spellbinding rendition of "I Put A Spell On You." I have no actual evidence, though, that he's Jewish, other than his Jewish-like name of Abrams and his Seth Rogen-like look. Funny story, though--I noticed my blog got a couple hundred hits after the Idol shows last week (and that's way more than usual.) Why? Because lots of people were googling stuff like "Casey Abrams Jewish" and Tim Halperin Jewish" and arriving at my posts from the last couple weeks. (As we discussed last week, the answer to the Tim Halperin question is no.

So what do I think of Idol as we go into the final round? Some random thoughts: I think two of the wild card picks were complete wastes--both Ashthon and Stefano did nothing to distinguish themselves from the dozens of similarly mediocre singers that have been eliminated in the round of 24 over the past five years. Naima, though, is at least compelling and has a good voice. I barely remember the guys other than Casey and Jacob Lusk, which doesn't bode very well. Haley Reinhart is the most (unintentionally) funny contestant they may have ever had on the show with her overwrought, trying-too-hard vocals. Pia Toscano had a nice performance, but Randy proclaiming it one of the best performances ever on Idol makes me wonder whether his Simon Cowell-like judging this year may be short-lived. And Karen Rodriguez singing in Spanish--sorry, I don't like it. Can Robbie Rosen sing "Jerusalem of Gold" in Hebrew on the show? If Fox wants to start a show called Bilingual Idol, that's great, and she can sing it on there (and I might even watch it). But I don't really want to see that on this show.

Please leave comments if you disagree. And enjoy the first week of the finals!

Jews on Idol update

2011-02-28T21:05:00.002-05:00

So last week I mused that there might be as many as seven Jewish singers in the American Idol Top 50. Now that we're down to the Top 24, with the discovery of some further information and some eliminations, there may be as many as four still around. Let's run them down.

First of all, we'll never know if Casey Schuber or Brittany Mazur are Jewish, because they've been eliminated. I guess Casey was canned in Vegas, because we never saw her, although we did see Brittany briefly in a chair being told she didn't make it.

We can also eliminate Tim Halperin from the list. While he did an impressive duet on "Something" with the lovely Julie Zorrilla and made the final 24, I googled him and found he was a member of a singing group called "The Tribe." With a name like that, could it have been a Jewish a capella group? No, it was a church group in the Midwest, and thus, I think we can safely say Tim Halperin is a member of "The Tribe" but not a Member of the Tribe.

So we may have as many as four left. There's Casey Abrams (no actual evidence he's Jewish, but he's named Abrams and looks like Seth Rogen), Rachel Zevita (has the look and was wearing Hamsa jewelry during her initial audition), Brett Loewenstern (seems like a good bet) and Robbie Rosen (is there really any doubt?)

How many will make the final 12 or 13 or whatever they're going to do this year? I guess we'll find out Thursday--and we'll also find out this week whether Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler can truly handle the judging table and are able to give solid critiques to singers' faces--or if they'll crumble like Ellen last year. Should be fun.

Looking for Jews on American Idol

2011-02-19T19:37:00.003-05:00

The other night during American Idol, my favorite Jewish Idol pundit, Daniel Feinberg at hitfix.com, tweeted "Based only on names, this is an MoT-heavy "American Idol" Top 100. I'm intrigued..." I had sort of noticed the same thing, and now that we're down to the Top 50 and can actually see all the names of who's left on the American Idol website, there may be at least seven MOTs in the running.

Now of course, Idol does have a history of Jewish singers doing well. There's Elliott Yamin finishing third in year five, Adam Lambert (who no one knew was Jewish until a video turned up of him singing a song in Hebrew and his mother turned up on screen and looked, well, very Jewish) as the runner-up in season eight, and I believe Anthony Federov, who finished fourth in year four, was Jewish, but no one really cared or noticed at the time. And of course, Paula Abdul is Jewish. But this many in the competition at one time (even if all of them could be gone by this time next week?) Got to be unprecedented.

Let's break them down, in alphabetical order, judging either by name or other things I've noticed (bearing in mind that we're really guessing on some of these, and that this post likely ends up linked on a neo-Nazi site to tell people who to root against):

Brett Loewenstern of Boca Raton, FL: This is the guy who was featured in the audition round as getting picked on a lot. He's got a nice voice, although I'm not sure it's good enough to get him anywhere near the top 5 or anything. Would say he's likely to make the top 20 (apparently that's the next cutdown number) just because of all the screen time he's recived.

Brittany Mazur of Tucson, AZ: I have no recollection of hearing her perform at any point in the show so far, but she's kind of pretty. That's all I got.

Casey Abrams of Idylwild, CA: This is the Seth Rogen-looking guy who started scat singing and stuff at the Austin audition, and then did a really wild and really good performance of Georgia on My Mind with a "stand-up bass." The audience and judges could tire of his quirkiness quickly, but I think he's genuinely good and will be a top contender.

Casey Schuber of Toms River, NJ: No idea who this person is, but Schuber sounds like it could be a Jewish name.

Rachel Zevita of New York, NY: She wore a Hamsa necklace on her initial audition, so I'm putting her in the MOT group. I don't remember her being all that good on that initial audition (she was the one that Jennifer Lopez somehow remembered having auditioned a couple years ago), but she's made it this far.

Robbie Rosen of Merrick, NY: I think if we can depend on anything, we can count on the fact that a guy named Robbie Rosen from Merrick, Long Island is Jewish. I don't think we can count on him winning, though. Personally, every time I see him sing on the show, he sounds like he has a good voice, but not quite that good--and just seems a little annoying and too dramatic. Then again, I thought Adam Lambert was too dramatic and kind of annoying in his first performance of the semifinals--and I did a 180 on that a week later. So who knows?

Tim Halperin of Fort Worth, TX: Once again, a Jewish sounding last name, but I know nothing about him.

I promise to follow up on this after the Vegas round. And if anyone is wondering about my opinion of the show with the new judging panel, the jury is still out. Last year, everyone raved about Ellen in the Hollywood round and then we got to the live shows and she was hugging bad singers and refusing to critique people. But I think J.Lo is a little better than expected (she does seem willing to be critical sometimes, even if she is taking on the Paula role of cheerleader) and Steven Tyler is entertaining. As for the show, the audition shows were way too formulaic, but this week's Hollywood round shows, especially the group show on Wednesday night, were pretty entertaining. Randy's comment that they've never had more talent on the show before is ridiculous, but I can still see the makings of a decent season.

Fingerhut out!

The Mysteries of Metro

2010-12-16T22:14:00.004-05:00

I have some strange, esoteric interests and obsessions. One of them is what I might call the "Mysteries of Metro." It's not the frustrating, yet obvious, problems with Metro---such as this morning's cracked rail and the havoc it wreaked on the Red Line. That I can actually make some sense of--the system doesn't have enough money for top-flight maintenance and stuff happens (i.e., rails crack when it's really cold). The mystery is how Metro handles it--they have to single track around the affected area, but why does single tracking around a couple of stations mean your trip takes 40 minutes longer than usual? And if that is the way it has to be, why can't they tell you that when your car is sitting in the station not moving--instead of the driver repeating over and over "I've been instructed to wait here before we go into the single tracking area." It's the little things like the lack of communication about the cracked rail that bother me more than the cracked rail.

I'm thinking more about this after Metro announced today that they were starting random bag checks in the system as a security measure. Metro says they won't be intrusive or time-consuming, but I don't buy that at all. This is just one more little thing that will make the ride to work more unpleasant--and for no good reason.

There's a video Metro posted on the Internet that shows how the bag checking procedure will work, and it has a clock showing that it will take less than a minute. That's nice--but completely irrelevant. If I'm late for work, and my train is about to pull into the station at the beginning of the minute when they decide to swab my bag for explosive materials--then the whole process really takes about six minutes, because that's how long it might be until the next train comes after they prevent me from getting the train I wanted to be on. (And who knows, some days it can be 10 minutes between trains--or 20 on the weekend.)

I totally understand the reasons for and, annoying as it is, don't have much of a problem with the security procedures at the airports. The full-body scanners aren't that big a deal, they only pat you down if you refuse the scanner, and everyone who gets on a plane has to go through security. But checking a handful of random people out of the thousands that say, walk into the Grosvenor station every morning doesn't really make much sense. And since they don't have enough manpower to do this at every station every morning, if the bomber gets to Grosvenor and sees someone checking bags, he can just drive down (or take the bus!) to the White Flint or Twinbrook station.

Two of my co-workers disagreed with my view on this--said that if any type of security can prevent a possible subway terrorist attack, random bag checks was a small price to pay. I see their point, but to be honest, I never really think about a possible terrorist attack on Metro (maybe because any potential terrorist would be so annoyed by the many "Mysteries of Metro" they'd choose someplace else.) You know what scares me the most on Metro? Being on a train in the 3-5 p.m. range after school lets out, when a group of teenagers get on and yell, run around, swing from the poles on the ceiling and generally act like they own the place. I'm scared that if I look at them funny, they'll yell at me or try to fight me, or that someone else decides to tell them to pipe down and that person becomes the victim of a brutal beating right there on the car. Terrorism? There's no history of it on Metro.
And yes, that guy was arrested the other day for posting on Facebook that he was going to blow up the Metro (and why would you post that on Facebook, anyway, if you were serious?), but he said he would bomb the third and fifth cars because they were the most crowded. I always go for the first car, because it's the least crowded (yes, I know it's the car most at risk in a crash like the one last year, but at least I'll have a seat.)

Anyway, I'd rather see Metro try to fix some of the mysteries I was referring to earlier, instead of taking manpower to work on ineffective bag checks. Here are some of my mysteries:

1.Most mornings at the Grosvenor Metro station, every car which comes from Shady Grove (and is usually fairly full when it arrives at Grosvenor) is followed by an empty train which starts at Grosvenor. Except some mornings, when it isn't. There's never any explanation--just for some unknown reason, something that happens nine out of 10 times (regularly enough that people get off at Grosvenor to wait for an empty train) just doesn't happen some mornings. Why?

2. The problems with the escalators are something that has been well chronicled. But here are two smaller escalator issues that make no sense to me. First of all, why is it that so many stations don't have their escalators prepared for huge crowds at a particular station? For example, I've walked out of Caps games numerous times to the Metro exit right at Verizon Center. And a number of times, of the four escalators at that entrance, three are going up and one going down even though thousands of people are going to go down them. Or three of the escalators aren't working, but the fourth, working one is going up. The Caps schedule comes out in July and it's on the Internet. Did no one alert Metro to this fact?

3. Even stranger, there are certain escalators within station which, when out of service, mean that the other escalator next to it must be used for people going both up and down. Aside from the safety issues involved in this, every time I see one of these dual up-down escalators, they're incredibly dirty. They look like a bunch of people sat on it to have lunch and then left their trash there. Why does this happen?

4. When my office was near Farragut North last year, I'd often arrive at the station at about 7 p.m., and frequently find a lot of people waiting for a Shady Grove train--and the board telling me that there was eight minutes until the next train. That meant that it had probably already been at least four or five minutes since the last train, meaning that there had at least been a gap of 12 minutes between trains at a time that was at the end of rush hour. The train would get to the station and would be incredibly crowded, so I'd wait for the next train. And it would come three minutes later. And when I got to Grosvenor, another train was so closely behind my train that it would arrive before I could even get to the escalator on the platform. And usually, I'd look up at the board, and there'd be another train coming in the next three to four minutes. No train for 12 minutes, and then three or four in 12 minutes--and this happened regularly around the end of rush hour. How and why?

5. And then there's the mystery of Metro passengers. Each car has a separate air conditioning system, so if you get on a steamy car with a broken cooling system in July, at the next stop, you should just get on the adjoining car, which more than likely is cooler. And yet, people just sit on the hot car and complain about how hot it is. Are Metro passengers so beaten down by the flaws of the system that they don't even want to try another car, expecting it to be just as hot, or do people just not know this?

There's more mysteries, but that's enough for one blog post. Please leave any other mysteries you've got in the comments.

For Wilbon, it was time to go

2010-11-21T21:41:00.003-05:00

I posted this as a comment on Dan Steinberg's D.C. Sports Bog, and a few other commenters seemed to like it, so I figured I'd post it here as my return to blogging about D.C. sports media. And since it originated as a comment on another blog, it's much shorter than my usual blog post. It's a reaction to Michael Wilbon's announcement that he's leaving the Washington Post to go full-time to ESPN after 32 years at the newspaper.

Michael Wilbon was once a very good columnist who I looked forward to reading after every Redskins game and other major sporting events, and 10 years ago he was probably the most important opinionmaker in D.C. sports. But anyone who tells you Wilbon's departure is a big loss for the Post either doesn't read the Post sports section regularly or doesn't care about D.C. sports.

In recent years since his PTI and ESPN fame--and especially since he stopped being a regular Monday morning Redskins columnist a few years ago--Wilbon has become almost completely detached from D.C. sports. He's written more columns about the Miami Heat in the last two months than he's written on the Caps and Nats combined the last two years. And every column he writes that isn't about the NBA is basically mailed in.

Even more troubling, in his columns and especially his chats, he's seemed to show a disrespect to D.C. sports fans, from his gratuitous, often lacking in fact, shots at Ovechkin to his attacks on Redskins fans for basically caring too much about the Redskins.

And the worst part is he doesn't even seem to read his own paper--or even his own columns. When he wrote earlier this year that Ovechkin "cannot" win a championship, he got asked about it in his chat and claimed he'd never written such a thing (this despite the fact that Steinberg had done a whole post on it). The most recent example of how out of touch he is was just this week, when someone asked in his chat about Colin Cowherd's comments regarding John Wall and his response was: "I hope you are accurately quoting Colin, and fairly summarizing his positions." This, of course, after Steinberg had written extensively about Cowherd's comments on this site, and a number of other writers had also slammed them in the sports world.

If a D.C. sports columnist can't even bother to read his own newspaper for news about the local sports teams he's supposed to be writing about, it's time for him to go work for ESPN full time.

Jewish Fact Check #12: Obama, Brzezinski and Middle East peace plans (UPDATED and CLARIFICATION)

2010-04-08T15:08:00.008-04:00

As a reporter in the Jewish press throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, there were many rumors about Barack Obama that I found myself writing about, and debunking -- but none may have been more persistent than the one about Zbigniew Brzezinski being one of his foreign policy advisers. If I was doing "Jewish Fact Checks" back then, it was the kind of thing I probably would have written about.

The charge had a grain of truth undergirding it -- Brzezinski had endorsed Obama and introduced him at a foreign policy speech Obama gave early in the primary campaign. But the Obama campaign, and even Obama himself, insisted that the former Carter national security adviser was no more than a prominent endorser of the candidate, and no role in the campaign or in formulating Obama's foreign policy views.

Which is why I was so surprised and disappointed when I read yesterday's David Ignatius column in the Washington Post suggesting that the administration was thinking about proposing an American peace plan for the Middle East. Whatever the wisdom of such a plan, I was struck by one of the "advisers" pushing such a policy...Zbigniew Brzezinski! As Ignatius writes:

Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser for presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, spoke up first, according to a senior administration official. He urged Obama to launch a peace initiative based on past areas of agreement; he was followed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser for Jimmy Carter, who described some of the strategic parameters of such a plan.

The New York Times even added that Obama had dropped in on the meeting -- which also included a number of other former national security advisers, although not Condi Rice or Stephen Hadley from the Bush II administration (Colin Powell, who was NSA during Bush I but Secretary of State during W.'s first term, was part of the meeting.)

This is really kind of stunning, when one looks back at the efforts the Obama campaign went to in order to make sure Jewish voters knew that they had nothing to do with Brzezinski and his ideas on the Middle East. And there was good reason for that: Brzezinski is not considered much of a friend of Israel by many pro-Israel voters. Last fall, he even suggested that if Israel sent jets to attack Iran's nuclear program, the U.S. should shoot them down.

Obama surrogates, and even Obama himself, insisted that they had virtually nothing to do with Brzezinski, constantly making this case to Jewish and pro-Israel voters for months. Take this comment from an appearance Obama made before Jewish voters in Ohio in February 2008:

There is a spectrum of views in terms of how the US and Israel should be interacting. It has evolved over time. It means that somebody like Brzezinski who, when he was national security advisor would be considered not outside of the mainstream in terms of his perspective on these issues, is now considered by many in the Jewish Community anathema. I know Brzezinski he's not one of my key advisors. I've had lunch with him once, I've exchanged emails with him maybe 3 times. He came to Iowa to introduce for a speech on Iraq. He and I agree that Iraq was an enormous strategic blunder and that input from him has been useful in assessing Iraq, as well as Pakistan, where actually, traditionally, if you will recall he was considered a hawk. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party was very suspicious of Brzezinski precisely because he was so tough on many of these issues. I do not share his views with respect to Israel. I have said so clearly and unequivocally.

Such a statement didn't stop either Hillary Clinton supporters or Republicans from continuing to spread the charge. In fact, it started to annoy me how much this apparently false information was being spread. Back in March 2008, not long after Clinton adviser Ann Lewis had been quoted saying that Brzezinski was an top Obama foreign policy adviser, I asked her at a panel during the UJC Young Leadership conference why she kept repeating that charge. She responded that she had read the information in the media -- after which Obama adviser Dan Kurtzer replied that Brzezinski wasn't even an adviser to the campaign -- something that seemed to genuinely surprise both Lewis and McCain rep Larry Eagleburger.

Then Republicans, most prominently the Republican Jewish Coalition in ads like this one, continued to parrot the charge all through the general election campaign. And the Jewish press tried to set the record straight, as my former colleague Ron Kampeas did here and here, noting that while Brzezinski did represent the campaign once on a call for Democrats Abroad, he played no role in the campaign.

The Brzezinski stuff even continued after the inauguration -- I noted that Florida Republican leader Adam Hasner had incorrectly repeated it in a March 2009 piece at the American Thinker.

Well, I don't know what was happening a year ago, but, now, after Ignatius' piece, it looks like Hasner has been proven right. No, Brzezinski's not an official member of the administration, but administration officials are openly soliciting and, apparently, taking, his advice -- and then touting it proudly in public. If the RJC wants to run those ads ripping Obama for having Brzezinski as an adviser this November or in 2012, they won't hear any commplaints from me -- because they're now supported by the facts. If one wants to argue that Brzezinski isn't as "anti-Israel" as groups like the RJC claim, that's fine -- but there's no argument that he's involved with the administration in a somewhat serious way.

Do I believe that the Obama campaign advisers -- who are now serving in the administration -- telling me and others that Brzezinski had no role in the campaign were lying or trying to mislead me? No, I don't -- I think they were either telling the truth as it was at the time or at least believed what the candidate was telling them. But do I feel like sort of a sucker for actually defending the campaign against those spreading the Brzezinski rumor when the administration turns around a little more than a year later and brags about getting advice from the guy? I sure do.

CLARIFICATION: I've had a couple complaints about this post, so let me clarify what I was saying. I never said that anyone was untruthful about the Brzezinski issue during the campaign. I never said Brzezinski worked for the administration or was a key adviser to the president. I don't even think there's necessarily anything wrong with the national security adviser bringing former NSA's in to get their points of view on occasion, as was apparently happening here. But if you are going to bring them in, and then have the president drop in, ask for advice and have Scowcroft and Brzezinski outline a Middle East peace plan -- and then leak to the newspapers in an apparent trial balloon that you're seriously considering taking their advice -- how is it wrong to conclude that Brzezinski is advising the president on Middle East issues? That's my point.

Meanwhile, a postscript: Kampeas wrote in one of the articles linked above that the Obama campaign insisted that Obama's views were close to Dennis Ross, not someone like Brzezinski. And while it's unclear how influential Ross is in the administration, it's interesting that while anonymous administration officials are talking positively about Brzezinski, at least one anonymous administration official late last month smeared Ross, telling Laura Rozen of Politico that Ross "seems to be far more sensitive to Netanyahu's coalition politics than to U.S. interests." Quite a change from the campaign, one might argue -- although to be fair, NSC chief of staff Denis McDonough did respond on the record that "such an assertion is as false as it is offensive."

I can't believe how stupid this NY Times article about American Idol is

2010-04-04T00:23:00.006-04:00

What program is Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times watching every Tuesday night at 8 on Fox? Because after reading her rave today about Ellen DeGeneres as an American Idol judge, it doesn't seem like she's actually watching American Idol. Either that, or she never watched it before last month. As an out-of-work journalist, reading such a silly piece in the gold standard of newspapers, the New York times, makes me fear for the future of my profession. And I hate when someone who is supposed to be watching television for a living doesn't seem to know anything about it.

Stanley has a history of factual errors in her TV criticism, but the problem in this article isn't facts. And yes, Stanley has every right to hold whatever opinion she chooses and, as long as she's employed by the Times, write about it. But her opinion that Ellen DeGeneres is somehow now the star of the show and has elevated it is so crazy and different from the opinions of any avid watcher of the show that I barely know how to respond. I just can't believe anyone would actually hold such an opinion unless they were a family member of Ellen or the president of her fan club.

Here's the money section of Stanley's piece:

She has little experience in the music business, but midway through her first season Ms. DeGeneres has all but hijacked the show, playing second fiddle to no one, not even the overbearing Mr. Cowell. She has elevated the tone with her own style of mischievous good spirits and well-honed, down-to-earth charm. She couldn’t be friendlier or more congenial, but she doesn’t quite blend with the other judges; at times, her facial expressions betray a quizzical distance from the show’s cheesier moments. It makes her all the easier for viewers to identify with, but she also makes the other judges look all the more like show business hacks.

There is a power shift playing out onstage. Ms. DeGeneres sometimes looks like the keen, dedicated new teacher who wins over students but is treated with polite suspicion by burned-out veterans in the faculty lounge.

She certainly tries harder. The alpha judge, Mr. Cowell, is a showy enunciator, but the words he utters with British bite are quite banal (“pointless” and “silly” and “useless” ). The other judges pay almost no attention to syntax or cliché — contestants are repeatedly told they “nailed it” or “hit it out of the park.” Randy Jackson, in particular, never tires of telling contestants, or as he constantly calls them, “dawg,” that they are “pitchy” or that they are “the bomb.”

Ms. DeGeneres keeps reaching for fresh, incongruous metaphors. She compared one singer’s uneven performance to the two panels of “a hospital gown” and a standout performance by another contestant as “Snooki’s pouf” (a reference to the bouffant hairdo of a cast member of “The Jersey Shore”).

I will agree with one thing Stanley says here. Ellen doesn't blend with the other judges--because she has no music industry experience. And that's a big reason why she's such a bad judge. Sure, she's occasionally said something funny or made a good critique, but most of the time her criticism consists of something like "I didn't like the song choice, but you were great." Or "It wasn't the best I've seen you, but I love you and you're great." Or possibly the low point for an American Idol judge, when she praised Paige Miles' outfit and then said something like "I'll let Kara handle the music critique." Actually, no, the low point was when she hugged Tim Urban for a mediocre performance.

She's hijacked the show? Really? Does she really think any singer on the show, or family member of a singer on the show, would rather--if given a choice--rather have a positive critique from Ellen than from Simon? Of course not. Does any viewer of the show look more forward, or give more respect to criticism from Ellen than Simon? Other than Alessandra Stanley, I doubt it. As for Ellen's use of "fresh, incongrous metaphors," Simon has used plenty of those over the years. There was the time he described someone's performance as a "beautiful dress with a slight tear in it." Or when he talks about someone sounded like the performance by a 10 year old at a family brunch. Some of them don't even make any sense, but they're incongrous and often fresh.

I've probably written too much about this already. But anyone who thinks adding Ellen--and continuing with four judges--is somehow a good thing for American Idol isn't much of a fan of American Idol. Adding someone with no professional knowledge of music, combined with the departure of Simon from the show after this season, is the death knell for the show. I just can't believe there's no one editing the arts section in the New York Times who watches the show and didn't say to Stanley, "Really, you sure about this? I watch the show and I think this article is insane."

Another reason NCAA tournament expansion sucks: The proposed schedule

2010-04-02T16:15:00.004-04:00

Amidst John Feinstein's recap today of the NCAA's hypocrisy in claiming the expansion of the NCAA tournament won't affect the "student-athletes," the thing that bothered me even more was how the NCAA says they plan to schedule the expanded 96-team event. Basically, that schedule will end up ruining the best two days of the NCAA tournament.

My first real vivid memory of the NCAA tournament is March 14, 1981 -- which was basically the birth of the fantastic finishes, buzzer beaters and upsets for which modern-day "March Madness" is known for. I was 10 years old and sitting on the couch, and remember the remarkable succession of events in about a half hour -- U.S. Reed of Arkansas hitting a half-court shot to defeat defending champion Louisville, Rolando Blackman running the last four minutes of the clock off in a tie game (in the pre-shot clock days) and hitting a jumper for Kansas State to upset number one seed Oregon State, and St. Joseph's hitting a late shot to defeat Mark Aguirre and number-one ranked DePaul. I'd never seen anything like it, and it started my love for the NCAA tournament. Imagine if a few minutes after Kansas lost to Northern Iowa this year, Kentucky got beat and then Duke lost on a half-court shot 15 minutes later, and you'd have something like what happened that day.

And over the years, I've always thought that of all the rounds of the NCAA tournament, that first Saturday and Sunday with the round of 32 is the best round of the tournament. You get a quadrupleheader on Saturday and a tripleheader on Sunday, but unlike the quadrupleheaders on Thursday and Friday, the games are tighter, there are fewer blowouts and frequently the top seeeds, even if they prevail, are really tested in a way that their games against 15 and 16 seeds don't provide in the first round. And the best thing about it is it's on the weekend--so you can basically spend a full two days, if you choose, watching the game without pesky obligations like work bogging you down.

But in the new schedule for the 96 team tournament, the round of 32 will be scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday of the second week of the tournament! This either means that they'll play all these games in the evening as doubleheaders simultaneously, and thus we'll get to see considerably less of this round on television, or they'll play half of the games during the afternoon (either in the format the first round is now shown on television, with separate doubleheaders at noon and seven or something like a continuous quadrupleheader that starts around 3 p.m.), thus allowing that pesky thing called work and other normal weekday obligations to get in the way of enjoying the most fun round of the tournament.

So for the formerly exciting kickoff of the tournament on Thursday and Friday, we're now going to have no top seeds playing, but just the nine through 24 seeds. Don't know about you, but if the biggest upset possible that day is say, the 24th-seeded tournament champion of the SWAC or Patriot League knocking off the fifth place team in the Big East seeded at number nine, those two days lose a lot of their luster. Then, on the weekend, we'll have the traditional round of 64, which, like this year, does frequently bring us upsets and buzzer beaters, but also a lot of blowouts--like when that SWAC champion plays Duke. It's a great appetizer for the weekend feast of the round of 32--but not the main course that we should be watching on Saturday and Sunday.

But now, those great two days of basketball are going to be diminished by ending up on Tuesday and Wednesday of the following week--where they'll be immediately followed on Thursday and Friday by the Sweet 16 round. This is another mistake because it disturbs the natural rhythm of the tournament. For most teams -- not counting the smaller conferences -- making the round of 32 is nice, but making the round of 16 is the true sense of achievement, a sign that you've had a successful season. No one keeps track of how many years in a row a team reaches the second round, because it's not considered that significant if you're in a major conference. And it's rare that any team makes the Elite Eight more than a couple years in a row. But hitting the Sweet Sixteen six, seven years in a row is an impressive accomplishment. That's why it makes sense that the tournament breaks for a few days in between the second round and the third, allowing us to sit back, take stock of what we've seen in the first four days and analyze what's to come over the following weekend. But in the new schedule, the Sweet 16 starts the next day after the round of 32 ends! It doesn't give us any time to breathe and it's a mistake.

Now, of course, the NCAA could easily fix this if they just moved the round of 96 to Tuesday and Wednesday and played the first three rounds consecutively in the same week. It still wouldn't fix the bigger problem in expanding to 96 (diluting the field), but at least it would leave the tournament viewing experience basically intact and unchanged. That might make more "student-athletes" miss school (cough, cough), but it would be the best thing for the tournament. We can only hope someone will realize that before it's too late.

Jewish Fact Check #11: Bill Kristol and Obama's Israel Policy

2010-03-31T23:22:00.006-04:00

I was at my sister's this past weekend for Passover and hadn't spent much time on the Internet, until I turned on her computer Monday night and came across this headline at Atlantic.com: "Right blasts Obama with charges of Anti-Semitism." I thought, "Wow, what have I missed?" Actually, nothing--except another unfortunate instance of a writer misconstruing legitimate criticism of someone's views/policy on Israel (in this case, the president's) with anti-Semitism.

After a brief introduction noting the chilly meetings last week between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Atlantic writer Alex Eichler provides three examples of alleged anti-Semitism from the right under the subheadline "Obama Hates Jews." One is a link to a blog post by Pamela Geller which does call Obama an anti-Semite, compares American Jews of the 2000s to European Jews in the 1930s and argues that another Holocaust is on its way. Geller has every right to make this argument, but it's one that is on the fringe -- I think it's fair to say that opinion isn't widely shared either in the Jewish community or, to the best of my knowledge, on the political right wing.

Eichler also notes Instapundit Glenn Reynolds' blog post, in which he first speculates that it is "plausible" that Obama treated Netanyahu rudely because he "hates Israel and hates Jews." Actually, that's not particularly plausible. There's no evidence that Obama "hates" Jews or Israel, although I think reasonable people can disagree on how friendly Obama is or wants to be with Israel -- or, perhaps more accurately, how warm his feelings are toward the current government in the Jewish state. Reynolds, though, does go on to say, though, that he actually doesn't think that's the explanation and that he finds another idea more plausible -- that this is all about Iran, and that Obama is either trying to put distance between the U.S. and Israel because Israel is going to strike Iran -- or that this is all a big distraction so that no one will realize that the U.S. is really helping Israel strike Iran.

Eichler does correctly report this (although others like Glenn Greenwald seem to have obsessed over the hates Jews stuff and totally ignored the following sentence), but perhaps in his eagerness to get the all-important third example for his piece that would demonstrate a trend, he also throws the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol into the mix. And that's where he goes wrong.

Eichler's piece states that Kristol is arguing Obama is perhaps pretending to hate Jews:

At The Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol argues that Obama "aspires to be a leader of humanity, not merely a president of a single country. And there’s no better way to be a leader of humanity than to show disapproval of the Jewish state." Whatever his real feelings toward Jews may be, Kristol holds that Obama must find it expedient to show "anger at the stiff-necked Jewish state. It puts him in sync with the rest of the world.

Having skimmed through the Kristol piece a few days before I saw the Atlantic piece, I was surprised. Did Kristol actually debate what Obama's "real feelings toward Jews may be"? I didn't recall that. And indeed, Kristol didn't. Here's what he wrote:

Why the exploitation of a minor disagreement with the Israeli government to justify a turn against Israel? President Obama cares about being popular—in America, certainly, but in the world as well. And not just because popularity in the world can help the United States achieve its foreign policy aims. But because, as James Ceaser argued in these pages in January, Obama aspires to be a leader of humanity, not merely a president of a single country.

And there’s no better way to be a leader of humanity than to show disapproval of the Jewish state. Sure, Obama’s turn against Israel will make it less likely that Palestinians will negotiate seriously with her. Sure, it will embolden radical Arabs and Muslims against those who would like their nations to take a different, more responsible, course. Sure, it’s a distraction from the real challenge of Iran. But the turn against Israel is ultimately a key part of what Obamaism is all about. That’s why there’s been so little attempt by the administration to reassure friends of Israel that Obama has been acting more in sorrow than in anger. Obama’s proud of his anger at the stiff-necked Jewish state. It puts him in sync with the rest of the world.

As you can see, Kristol doesn't talk about Obama's feelings towards Jews at all, just about his policy toward the Jewish state. He's arguing that Obama is treating Israel badly because much of the rest of the world treats Israel badly -- and the president wants to ingratiate himself with the rest of the world in order to be a "leader of humanity." It's certainly a debatable assertion, but there's no accusation of anti-Semitism or "Obama hates the Jews" in that theory. In fact, Kristol's argument is really just a more negatively-spun version of something Obama has said himself -- that Obama believes there needs to be some "daylight" between the U.S. and Israel in order to make progress in the peace process.

(And for those who want to make an issue of Kristol's use of the term "Jewish state," please don't. Many writers and journalists, including me earlier in this post, use the term "Jewish state" interchangeably with Israel as sort of a synonym in order to vary the language in an article about Israel.)

A lot of people seem to not like Bill Kristol because they don't like his opinions or don't think he's a good columnist. That's fine. Personally, I find his affection for Sarah Palin puzzling, but the few times I've spoken to Kristol after Jewish community events at which he's spoken, he's been nothing but kind and generous with his time. But whatever one's feelings about Kristol, he should be quoted correctly. And he was making a critique of the president's Israel policy, not speculating about whether someone is an anti-Semite. As I've written about before, I wish people would stop confusing the two. There's a big difference.

It's like we're back on Season 1 Idol

2010-03-24T13:52:00.004-04:00

Remember season 1 of American Idol, when you got really excited waiting for Kelly Clarkson to perform, and you also liked Tamyra Gray and thought Justin Guarini was okay--and pretty much everbody else kind of sucked? Or season two, when you looked forward to Ruben and Clay, and to a lesser extent Kimberly, and everyone else was doing karaoke? Well, after a number of seasons of American Idol that may not have had anyone as popular as Kelly but did often have a number of entertaining singers and performers, we've now regressed to those early days of Idol--where most of the top 12 can't sing and the only reason to watch the show is to wait around for Crystal Bowersox to take the stage -- and to a lesser extent Sioban Magnus (Tamyra?). If you want to say Mike Lynche is the Justin, fine, but that's it. Otherwise, this is a depressing batch of Idol contenders.

Some of that is America's fault--I guarantee whatever Katelyn and Lilly would have sang would have been better than much of the group last night. Some of that is what the judges gave us to start with. But it really is remarkable, that after the metamorphosis of this show from a straight singing competition in its early years to one that also focused on musicianship and what you could do to reinvent well-known songs (starting with Daughtry and Blake Lewis and culminating in David Cook and Kris Allen winning), we're really, other than mostly Crystal Bowersox, back to those early Idol days of just singing, and often badly. As much as I often got annoyed at how too many contestants tried to fit every theme into their own little niche, this year is really a step backward for the show. At least in year one and two, I was stil fascinatd with the whole format of the show, we were still getting to know the judges, etc. Now, the next 10 weeks are just going to be a slog until we hopefully crown Crystal the winner.

Anyway, a few thoughts on last night:

No one has ever done a good job on "Against All Odds" on this show, so why would Paige Miles think she could? I have no idea. That was terrible.

Miley Cyrus as a mentor is kind of strange, but you can't tell me that "Party in the USA" isn't a great pop song.

The fact that Tim Urban is on this show is a joke. And Miley, no one told him he was boring. They told him he couldn't sing. And they were right. He sang a song with about three notes in it and still wasn't that good.

Katie Stevens should be renamed Pitchy Stevens.

Gotta love Kara saying they've talked to much about Andrew Garcia's version of "Straight Up." You think? But it's becoming more and more evident he just can't sing that well.

Aaron Kelly seems like a nice kid, and has an OK voice, but could he be more middle of the road with his song choices? "Don't Want to Miss a Thing"? A song by Lonestar a couple weeks ago?

Only on this season's Idol is the boring competence of Casey James (on key singing, occasional good playing of the guitar) deemed album-worthy by Kara. Kara (who actually isn't bothering me as much this year), were you listening or just, um, looking? First of all, Casey James seems to swallow the last word of every line in the song. Second, he sounded just like Huey Lewis last night--he didn't change the song at all. In fact, if I close my eyes, I would have thought that was Huey Lewis. Which is fine for karaoke, but not for Idol.

Crystal was great. But I have no idea why Kara and Ellen want her to "go crazy." I thought you're supposed to know who you are, etc. And she does.

Didi wasn't perfect. But she sure didn't seem as bad as the judges seemed to think--and she's hot and Jewish, so I liked her.

I don't like when singers on Idol scream in the middle of a song. But the first time Siobhan did it, it was a really good scream. And the second time, it fit really well in the song. But now, it's getting repetitive and boring. It's like waiting around for the twist ending in a M. Night Shyamalan movie. Didn't fit in her fairly unexciting performance of "Superstition." She's the only thing that may be saving us from a one-person race, but she's going to have to diversify if she wants to do that.

Bottom three: It's always better to be sort of bad than really bad, since people then feel sorry for you. But there were so many bad singers, I can't believe they'll all survive. Bottom three will be Paige, Katie and Andrew and I think Andrew is going home--but if it is Paige, Katie, Tim, or Aaron, it won't matter.

The Stones and Idol--not a good combo

2010-03-17T12:57:00.002-04:00

So unless I get some loud, emotional outcry from my readers, I've decided to stop regularly blogging American Idol. When I started doing Idol, the Internet was still growing and there wasn't that much Idol commentary out there. Now, there are about 8,000 people blogging Idol and I'm not sure I'm offering anything that unique. But I did have a couple thoughts about last night's show.

First of all, while the show wasn't terrible last night, it was mostly mediocre. Part of the reason is that many of the singers this year aren't very good. But the other reason, I think, is that while it sounds really cool to have the Rolling Stones as a theme, it's not really a good selection. Why? Because Mick Jagger has such a unique style as a singer and performer, anyone who tries to duplicate it is going to fail. In addition, many of the Stones songs, vocally, work because of how Mick sells them. In this group, the only singers that had enough talent to really be up to singing and selling a Stones song were Siobhan and Crystal.

Most troubing part of the night was, of course, seeing that many of the people who advanced last week over better singers didn't do much to show that their advancement was well deserved. Lacey Brown? Really, she's Idol season 1 or 2 talent with that thin voice and general boringness to her performance (Is boringness a word?) Katie Wheeler has been done wrong by the judges, and wasn't awful, but off key early in the song and just kind of meh. To her credit, Paige at least did show some vocal talent tonight--more than she has shown for the three previous weeks--but it was hardly something anyone is downloading to their IPod today. And Tim Urban? I reacted with the same confusion that the judges did (and Simon was pretty much correct on just about everybody last night, although Kara had a point on Gimme Shelter.) How do you sing a song about having a woman under your thumb in a breezy, what-me-worry reggae-type arrangement. It really was strange--and didn't show that Tim could sing since he sung-spoke most of the song.

Finally, I hope those of you who would be interested in this saw that in one of the family photos Didi showed there was a lit menorah in the background.

Who's going home? Bottom three will hopefully be Lacey, Tim and Katie and I think Lacey will go. But after last week, who knows?

The worst top 12 ever!

2010-03-11T23:10:00.002-05:00

Wow, what a travesty. It's unbelievable that they could come up with such a poor top 24 to begin with, and then tonight get rid of four of the better singers in that top 24 before we even got to the final 12. I know some will accuse me of exaggeration, but I really do think tonight was the worst American Idol elimination show ever. And now we undoubtedly have one of the worst top 12's ever.

Here's why. The most notorious, unfortunate eliminations in Idol history were still only one person wrongly getting eliminated. And in most cases, they had already been on the show for a long time and were going a week or two early. Sure, Tamyra shouldn't have been eliminated that first year in the final four, but she still might have lost out to Justin Guarini the next week before we got to the finals (not saying that was right, but it wouldn't have shocked anyone.) A lot of people think Chris Daughtry went home too early, but let's be honest--some people had started to tire of his similar-sounding performances every week, and lots of people like Taylor Hicks and Elliot Yamin.

But tonight we had FOUR people all getting eliminated before they even got to show their stuff in the final 12--and all of them were clearly better than other people who made the final 12. Let's start with the women, because that was the most upsetting. We lost Lilly Scott, who while I did remark the other day might have been a little bit of a one-trick pony. But even if I'm right, it's a really good trick. She's got a cool-sounding voice, and she sings in tune and picks interesting songs--three more things she's got going for her than half of the top 12. She clearly earned a spot in the top 12--she didn't even have a bad performance in the semifinals.

Then we have Katelyn Epperly. Not only was she very cute, but she could sing. Her first two performances were quite good--even if Simon didn't like the first one--and she showed versatility, doing a Beatles sort-of-rocker and then a slow Coldplay song at the piano. Sure, her Carole King tune wasn't that great, but it's not like it was out of key--even though the judges savaged her for no apparent reason. It was competently but unexcitingly performed, which is more than you could say for many of the other women. Unfortunately, if she had just stood without a keyboard and belted it out like she did tonight, she might have survived.

And who do we have making it in ahead of them? Take your pick. There's Katie Wheeler, who actually has a nice voice but was way out of tune this week on "Breakaway" and isn't particularly original--although I'm willing to give her a break because the judges have so messed with her head she has no idea what's going on and people felt sorry for her. Then we have Lacey Brown, who was terrible for two weeks, had a decent performance this week and still has no chance of winning the competition because her thin voice may be pleasant but is nothing special. And then there's Paige Miles, who Simon, even tonight, was talking about her potential but has done absolutely nothing to make us see any of that potential. She's had three mediocre to bad performances in a row. How does someone make the top 12 on American Idol not giving one good performance? She did nothing to earn a spot at all. I'm speechless.

As for the guys, Todrick Hall has his problems, but at least he was interesting. Alex Lambert was kind of uncomfortable to watch because of his stage fright, but he had a really good voice. In a stronger year, I could understand either of them not making the finals. But look who made it in front of them. Tim Urban--who gave one of the worst semifinals performances in recent memory in week one, barely improved in week two and then gave a decent but way overpraised performance last night? You're going to regret that hug, Ellen, when we're still listening to Tim Urban churn out crappy performances in April. Aaron Kelly? Really? After all the talk of artistry, the judges overpraise some teenager who just sings pop country songs, and not even that well, and he somehow gets through to the top 12? Wow.

So we're left with a lackluster top 12 that starts with five singers that are already cannon fodder--unless, of course, we get more wacky voting results. I have no idea what America is thinking, and whether the completely wacky judges remarks have anything to do with it, but I'm not excited to slog through the next 11 weeks of this. A quick theory, though: Could this be some kind of reaction to the increasing emphasis by Idol on singers using instruments and rearranging songs? Everyone eliminated tonight either played their own instrument at some point during the competition or, like Todrick, totally revamped songs. Meanwhile, Aaron, Tim, Paige, Katie and Lacey didn't play instruments and sang their songs straight, no rearrangements. Hmmm? Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Suffering through one last night of the guys

2010-03-11T00:28:00.004-05:00

I wasn't looking forward to hearing this lackluster crop of guys tonight, but I have to say with some of the dead weight cleared out already, it wasn't as bad as I feared. Still, it does seem like the judges are grading the guys on a curve--as long as you can sing in tune, they don't seem to generally care if you're making the song your own or showing any originality. At least Simon did at one point acknowledge that the judges are confusing the singers as much as helping them. But, of course, the highlight tonight is seeing Kara cry. That made my night--although, let's face it, it still wasn't as funny as watching Paula cry. Oh, Kara, you can never live up to the mark Paula left...

Lee Dewyze ("Fireflies") -- I don't particularly care for this song and find it annoying, which means I actually like Lee's version better than the original because he gave it a little more of a rock feel and sang it with his typical raspiness. I enjoyed it, and hope he makes it to the top 12.

Alex Lambert ("Trouble")-- It's good to see Alex looking more comfortable, and he does have a really nice sounding voice and sounded very good tonight. But still, isn't he just singing, granted in tune, the song and not showing "what kind of artist he's going to be" or "showing artistry"? And yet Kara is talking about how he could win the whole thing? Really? What am I missing? Hey, I don't have a huge problem with someone who comes out and just sings very well--although I appreciate and enjoy it more when someone is putting their own spin on it--but if the judges are going to obsess over it for some people, why does it not go for others?

Tim Urban ("Hallelujah") -- That was mostly in tune, and certainly the best Tim has sung this season. But sit down Ellen. It wasn't that good. The idea that, according to Kara, he's now a contender, is ridiculous. He hasn't really done anything to earn his way into the final 12 except not suck three weeks in a row. Such low standards.

Andrew Garcia ("Genie in a Bottle")-- So the judges kept whining that everything Andrew did wasn't as good as his "Straight Up" in the Hollywood round--so he looked for a dance pop song from a female artist and chose Christina Aguilera and "Genie in a Bottle." (Ironically, it was also the first hit single for both women.) Was it the right choice to sing and rejigger into an acoustic version? Probably not. "Genie in a Bottle" has a more complicated melody and lyrically it doesn't work ("Straight up now tell me are you going to love me forever" is a lot more effective in a stripped down, acoustic version than "I'm a genie in a bottle, rub me the right way" which just sounds silly.) Having said that, it was still kind of interesting and the singing wasn't bad, even if it didn't quite work. As for Ryan's question about whether he regrets performing "Straight Up" in Hollywood, it actually isn't a bad question--since the judges have made it an albatross around his neck.

Casey James ("You'll Think of Me") -- This was OK, and I can barely remember it an hour after watching it. Casey is looking like a one trick pony--it's not a bad trick, but how long can it seem fresh, considering there's nothing particularly unique or special about him excecpt that he turns on Kara.

Aaron Kelly ("I'm Already There") -- Now we have Aaron, who does seem to know what kind of artist he is (pop country crooner), but doesn't do anything special or show any artistry and still generally gets praised. I didn't think the vocal was that good (flat in parts), and I was just kind of bored. As for Simon slapping down Kara about her complaint that he didn't have kids and therefore couldn't sing the song--thank you, Simon.

Todrick Hall ("Somebody to Love")-- Now that was really good--he took a great song, made it his own by giving it an R&B/gospel spin but didn't render it unrecognizable, and sang it well. Not sure what Simon's problem was--he said it was too Broadway, but at least it was more entertaining that most of the men have been all season. I hope he stays, just so we can see what he can do.

Mike Lynche ("This Woman's Work")--I said last week that Mike appeared to be better than the Michael Sarver/Matt Rogers hole I had put him in, and he proved that even more tonight. Really good performance. And it made Kara cry, for some reason. Get a hold of yourself, Kara. You're on national television, you're married but blatantly hitting on Simon every night and you're tearing up after songs. At least it's entertaining.

So who goes home? I hope it's Tim Urban and Aaron Kelly. And you know what? I think it will be those two as well, although I wouldn't be shocked if it was anyone other than Big Mike.

It's not about "who you are as an artist," it's about singing well

2010-03-09T23:20:00.003-05:00

Tonight's American Idol left us with a pretty clear division between the five singers that should no question be part of the final 12, and the three singers who will, hopefully, be the ones fighting it out for that sixth spot. Tonight's show also was a demonstration of how the producers have apparently gotten their act together enough to fit eight songs into one hour--a pleasant change from last year's messes. Let's get to the rundown:

Katie Stevens ("Break Away")--Oh, Katie, if you've been watching this show since you were 8 years old, you should know that it's never a good idea to sing another Idol winner's song on the show. You can never measure up. And Katie didn't--wasn't even close. Then again, after that fiasco last week, when Randy told her to sing a song by someone under 20, and then Kara told her to sing a song about being confused, who can blame her for actually being confused. She's going backward each time, partially thanks to the craziness at the judges' table. As for her not knowing who she is as an artist--maybe she doesn't. But you know what, Kara and Ellen? That's wasn't the reason she wasn't good tonight. Nor was it that she didn't "connect" with the song. Whatever happened to the truth, that Katie wasn't good tonight simply because she didn't sing the song well?

Siobhan Magnus ("House of the Rising Sun")-- I thought this was quite good--some notes occasionally were off, but it was generally well sung and sort of original with the a capella part at the beginning. Was a good point that Kara brought up, though? Why aren't they giving Siobhan a hard time for doing different stuff each week and not knowing what "kind of artist" she is? Actually, I can answer that. She's pretty good, so it really doesn't matter--because people enjoy her performances. As I said, "not knowing who you are as an artist" has somehow become a synonym for "you didn't sing well." And it's annoying me.

Lacey Brown ("The Story")--That's certainly the best Lacey has been, but it's not like she's that good or has any kind of chance of winning the competition--so I have a hard time caring.

Katelyn Epperly ("I Feel the Earth Move")--Katelyn has become one of my favorites over the first couple weeks, so I kind of agreed with Simon on her performance tonight. It was well sung and performed, and yet it wasn't particularly special and thus I was kind of disappointed. But it should be enough to advance--she was certainly better than a number of others tonight.

Didi Benami ("Rhiannon") -- Finally, my other favorite Didi picks up her guitar and does a really good performance--it sounded good, she put her own slight new spin on the song and it should be enough to get her into the finals.

Paige Miles ("Smile") -- We keep hearing about how great Paige's voice is, and yet after three weeks we've seen no indication from her singing that her voice is in any way special. That leads me to believe either she doesn't have that great a voice or she's the worst picker of songs in American Idol history. Probably a combination of both. She's done absolutely nothing to deserve a spot in the final 12.

Crystal Bowersox ("Give Me One Reason") -- Not a big fan of this Tracy Chapman song, but Crystal did enough to change it up and give it a little more bluesy tone that I liked the song and really liked her performance. She's gotta be the favorite as we enter the finals.

Lilly Scott ("I Fall to Pieces") -- This was good and I like Lilly's voice, but I agree with Simon that it didn't have a "wow factor." And I kind of think that might be Lilly's probablem a few weeks from now--she kind of does the same thing every week and could get sort of monotonous. But we'll see.

So I'll predict that Paige is definitely going home and that Lacey will also go home, although it could be Katie and it wouldn't matter. If it is anyone other than those three, I will be very disappointed. Fingerhut out.

Some Idol thoughts

2010-03-04T14:50:00.002-05:00

I was busy last night and this morning doing a freelance assignment and watching the Duke-Maryland game, so I didn't have time to do a full-blown Idol wrapup, but here are a few observations on last night before tonight's eliminations.

Crystal Bowersox was terrific, and right now looks like the frontrunner -- of an admittedly very weak field. Was amused that Simon used the term "misunderestimated." Just another of George W. Bush's legacies to America.

The judges, specifically Randy and Ellen, said Haeley Vaughn didn't "connect" with the song. I'm not sure what this means and wonder why they can't actually say what her problem was: "Haeley, you sung mostly off-key and out-of-tune." It's harsher, but it's the truth. But she dresses cool and makes those things for her hair and smiles a lot, so she'll probably get the teen girl vote and make it through.

Lacey Brown wasn't as terrible as last week, but she's just no good. Oh, and Ellen, you keep referring to how you're glad the singers are following the "notes" they get. Ellen, they're not getting notes. That's a TV term. They're getting critiques, or advice, from the judges. Although I hope the Idol producers are giving you notes telling you not to use the term "notes" anymore.

Katie Stevens is cute and has a powerful voice, but isn't particularly original. A few years ago, that would have made her a judges' favorite, but now it earns their scorn. So after singing an older song like "Feeling Good" last week, she picked what she thought was a younger song this week in "Put the Records On." Now, that song is sung by a younger singer, and it's newer, but it is sort of an older-sounding song. But why exactly does Katie have to sing a younger song anyway? Just because she's young, she has to sing a younger song? (Idol trivia: Ayla Brown, new Mass. Senator Scott Brown's daughter, was told the same thing, picked a Natasha Bedingfield song that didn't really showcase her voice and got voted out on the last night of the seminfinals a few years back.)

First Randy says, who do you like that's under 20? Really, Randy? She's got to sing a song performed by a teenager? She can't do a song by someone of drinking age because that would be too old? Then Kara chimes in with, "You should do a song about something you're feeling--like you're confused, so sing a song about that." What? This is seconds after Kara got done telling Katie that the song she picked this week didn't allow her enough space to "do your thing" as far as putting a new spin on it--which is probably correct and what she should actually be looking at, how the song sounds with her voice, not what it is about. Contradictory advice within less than a minute--Kara, you've set a record?

Didi Benami was very disappointing. She needs her guitar and someone advising her on what to sing. I'm worried about her making it to next week. She wasn't as bad as the judges said, but her problem is she's got a really good but kind of quirky voice, and yet, as Randy said, she the past two weeks has picked songs that emphasize the quirkiness in her voice at the expense of other, more appealing aspects. If you listen to her sing "Terrified," for instance, the voice sounds much better, but last night, there was an oddness to the voice that wasn't always appealing. As for her confusion about Simon saying she was self-indulgent, here's the deal. Simon was probably being a little unfair, but he's using it in the sense that you're picking a song or doing a performance that seems more designed to please you than to please the audience. The best example of this is when Chris Daughtry picked some really obscure, not very good Queen song on Queen night instead of a better, more well-known song simply because it was in the style of all the other songs he'd sung up to that point on the show.

Michelle Delamor is pretty and has a nice voice--she reminds me of a more talented Syesha Mercado. She'll probably stick around for a while but probably isn't really a contender for the title. Thought her spin on a Creed song was weird--not bad at all, just strange.

Lilly Scott sang a great Sam Cooke song and sang it well, but the way the judges reacted you would have thought Sam Cooke had come back to life. Best of the night by far? Really, Ellen? Bowersox left your memory that quickly?

Katelyn Epperly, who I thought didn't even belong in the top 24 two weeks ago, is quickly becoming one of my favorites. She's cute, she seems to have a fun personality judging from the taped packages and has a nice voice. I wasn't head over heels over her performance last night--I agreed it was a little too slow--but I liked the piano and the singing was pretty good. Having said that, Simon--it wasn't a million times better than last week because she was quite good last week.

Paige Miles allegedly has the best voice of the women, but we haven't seen any evidence of that. And, Paige, if you're going to sing a song by a former Idol on the show, you have to make it really good--and that just wasn't.

Siobhan Magnus was good, but not great--there was a lot of focus on that one note, which was good, but who really cares? You got to hit all the notes. I still liked her, though, and she does have a lot of talent, even if she seems drunk most of the time.

I think Paige will go home and hopefully we'll say goodbye to Lacey Brown.

Jewish Fact Check #10: Democratic support for Israel isn't down, GOP support is up

2010-03-02T22:10:00.007-05:00

Something akin to the game of telphone seems to happen too much these days, especially in the Jewish community. Some sort of fact comes out, and then as it gets repeated, others, intentionally or sometimes unintentionally, distort it until the alleged fact that everyone is familiar with isn't the actual fact at all. (One example is the poll that found 6 percent of Israelis thought Obama is "pro-Israel," which incorrectly evolved into 6 percent approval for Obama among Israelis.) And it seems to be happening with this recent Gallup poll on support for Israel broken down by political party.

Earlier this week, both Shmuel Rosner in the Jerusalem Post and Jim Besser in The Jewish Week both correctly noted the growing partisan gap between Democrats and Republicans on support for Israel and speculated on the implications of that fact (a fascinating issue, but one I'm not concerned with in this post.) But then Marc Tracy in Tablet, in providing his own analysis of the findings, referred to "the Democratic turn from Israel," followed by the Republican Jewish Coalition's Noah Silverman writing that the poll showed Democratic support for Israel "eroded" and that there is a "shrinking proportion of Democrats who say they support Israel."

Problem is, while the poll does show that the partisan gap between Democrats and Republicans is widening, this is not due to any significant change over the last decade in Democratic support for the Jewish state. It's almost entirely due to a striking increase in Republican backing for Israel.

Yes, Democratic backing for Israel went from 54 percent in 2009 to 48 percent in 2010 -- hardly an enormous jump in a poll with a plus or minus four percent margin of error. But if one looks at the long-term trend, here is the Democratic number on this question from 2001-2009: 51, 48, 48, 46, 41, 50, 51, 48, 54, 48. So actually, the Democratic support for Israel is actually down three points from 2001, even with 2002 and 2003 and even with 2008 too. In fact, four of the ten years polled had 48 percent support for Israel among Democrats, one had 46 and two others had 50 and 51, with a couple outliers either way. In other words, as Gallup says in its report: "Support for Israel among Democrats has been relatively flat."

Contrast that to the Republican numbers, which increased remarkably from 60 to 85 percent from 2001 to 2010. The numbers took a big jump from 2001 to 2002, from 60 to 67 percent, and then another 10 percent jump the folllowing year before basically leveling off there. From 2006 to 2009, GOP backing for Israel (the actual question is where does one's "sympathies" lie, with Israel or the Palestinians) was 77, 76, 77 and 77 before jumping to 85 percent this year (It's not clear why, but it appears like a possible explanation for the big jump after four years of stability would be a reaction to Republican feelings of Obama's policies in the region.)

Anyway, that's remarkable -- this poll shows support for Israel among Republicans went from a significant majority to almost unanimous in ten years. Support among independents also has skyrocketed, from 42 percent to 60 in the decade. That's the story -- how did Israel become so popular among Republicans and why? Is it all because of 9/11 and the war on terror? Something else?

Democratic support for Israel certainly isn't increasing. But it's not decreasing, either. While there is no doubt that there are elements on the left that aren't sympathetic to Israel, and they do seem to be more vocal and noticeable than they may have been a few years ago, this poll shows that this segment of the left, or Democratic Party, doesn't appear to be growing. So when we discuss this poll, we can discuss why it is exactly that GOP sympathies for Israel are so sky high. We can discuss why Democratic support for Israel isn't rising in the same way. But don't say that Democratic support for Israel is eroding or slipping -- because that's not what the numbers say.

It's going to be a long, painful season of Idol

2010-03-02T19:06:00.004-05:00

First, a couple words on last week's eliminations. Yes, Janell and Ashley are very attractive women, but I can't really take much issue with either their eliminations or either of the guys who went--none of them sang particularly well last week. Still puzzled why Janell said afterwards that she planned to bring her guitar and sing next week--why not go with your strength the first week? As for Tyler Grady criticizing the judges, I actually sympathize with him. We saw them tell him, "Oh, Tyler, we love your 70s Jim Morrison vibe, keep doing that" and then he did that and they complain that he needs to break out of that box. Still, he wasn't that good.

Anyway, my quick reaction from tonight was that I was disappointed we didn't get to see the girls--since they're better--and while the guys were better tonight, it's still going to be a long year.

Michael Lynche ("This Is A Man's World") -- Wow, didn't see that coming. When he said he was doing James Brown, I thought, "Oh, this isn't going to end up well" but I was wrong. I mistakenly compared this guy to Michael Sarver and Matt Rogers last week, as the big, friendly guy who was a decent singer and everyone liked but had no chance of winning. Not saying Michael is necessarily a contender yet, but he showed much more soul -- and much more in the way of vocal chops -- than i think most of the viewers suspected he had. Oh, and Ellen, you may have liked his song choice last week, but no one else did.

John Park ("Gravity")-- Well, the vocals were better than last week, but I began to doze off about 25 seconds in. Just didn't do much for me. And Ellen with her "I think you have it in you" crap--she's now Paula but without a music background. Not a good combination. I didn't like Kara's joining the panel last year, but at least she had something to say with her "artistry" stuff. It was annoying and often off-base or unfair, but at least it was something. All Ellen is giving us is dumb platitudes when she feels bad for the singers.

Casey James ("I Don't Want to Be") -- No TV since he was seven years old! I don't even want to imagine that... (I'm reminded of course of the Simpson episode in which Homer punishes Bart by not allowing him to go to the Itchy and Scratchy movie but says, "You can watch TV." Bart responds, "TV sucks" and Homer, upset, says, "I know you're upset, so I'm going to pretend you didn't say that." Anyway, a lot of people may have done this song on Idol, but I don't remember any of them being particularly memorable (I remember Elliot was OK, but he had much better performances.) And Casey, I thought, was fine, but also unmemorable. I like the fact, though, that Casey has a somewhat limited voice, but seems to pick songs that fit that voice pretty well (I'm not as concerned about the "grit" as Kara and Simon). He's looking pretty good for the final 12.

Alex Lambert ("Everybody Knows")-- Love the sound/tone of his voice, and he looked more comfortable than last week with the guitar (although still not particularly confident). Not sure it deserved the cartwheels it got from the judges--there was nothing particularly unique about it, was there? I thought that was the key this year. Or was that only last week with the girls?

Todrick Hall ("What's Love Got to Do With It?") -- A great song, but Todrick didn't sing it great. It wasn't terrible, but I do agree with Randy, that Todrick changes everything too much--but it's understandable why he's confused, because Randy and Kara are constantly saying how important it is to show artistry and interpret a song or whatever. So don't worry, Todrick, if you're around next week, you'll come out, sing a song straight and they'll complain that you didn't change it up at all.

Jermaine Sellers ("What's Going On?") -- Also a great song, and I was thinking "the kind of performance you'd see in a hotel lounge" before Simon threw out the "cabaret performance" line we haven't heard in a while (and personally, I've missed it--although I think I like "performance I'd heard on a cruise ship" better.) I thought he did OK in the chorus, but otherwise was just too much for me. As for Jemaine's remarks at the end, was he saying that he's a God-fearing person and therefore he thinks God will get him through to the next round, or that he fears God more than Simon, or what? Anyone who could explain would be much appreciated.

Andrew Garcia (A James Morrison song I don't remember the name of) -- Wasn't anything to remember, but didn't think it was the disaster that the judges did. Last week, they told him he shouldn't have taken the song he did and reworked it, so this week he chose to not rework a song and sing it straight and got knocked for it. Oh, well. And, really, it's not totally fair for them to judge every performance with the "Straight Up" performance as the baseline that he has to equal or else he's failed. But I have a feeling that's what we're going to be seeing for a while.

Ryan Kelly ("My Girl") -- Did Ellen call the song "My Girl" forgettable? Whatever. Why is she on this show again? Anyway, this guy's got a good voice, but I'm not sure I need a country-tinged version of "My Girl." Most interesting thing: Simon telling him he needs to show the kind of artist he's going to be, and Kara disagreeing, even though she said that about three different women last week. Actually, I think he did show what kind of artist he's going to be: An lite-country artist. Not really my thing, but it's something.

Tim Urban ("I Can Take You Higher" or something like that) -- Tim was much better than last week. I still don't think it's good enough to warrant a place in the final 12, but this was OK, not an embarassment like last week. Actually, most of these guys don't deserve a place in the final 12, but I suppose six will get one.

Lee Dewyze ("Lips of an Anglel")-- This was fine vocally, but I wasn't impressed with the song choice--boring and lacking in a strong melody. He seems like a poor man's Chris Daughtry--nothing wrong with that, but if he's really far and away the best of the guys as Simon says, it's going to be a long season.

I'm going to say Jermaine Sellers and John Park are going home, but if it was Todrick or Tim Urban or a couple other guys, it wouldn't really matter.

The Worst Top 24 Ever!

2010-02-25T00:13:00.002-05:00

Every year around this time, my sister says -- in the past often in an email, this year as a post on Facebook -- that this season of Idol has the most talented top 24 ever, or the best final 12 ever. And every year, because it's the way I am, I respond with something like, "I think that remains to be seen--let's see them sing first." This year, I wrote something similar in response to Amy's post, and then said, "I think there are some talented women, but not so sure about the guys." Well, the women were a little disappointing last night, but at least there was some talent there, some people you could at least sort of envision winning American Idol. But tonight -- wow. Even after sounding caution about the guys, that was worse that I ever imagined. I'm not even sure I want to waste my time blogging about that horror show. Each singer, for a while, seemed worse than the previous one.

So while Ellen still sucked as a judge tonight (really, Ellen, not everyone is "great"), and there's still no reason to have four judges, there are much bigger problems with this show right now -- a lack of talent. Seriously, tonight's show reminded me of the semifinal rounds in seasons one and two--just a bunch of mediocre and uninspired singers. Casey James wasn't that great, but he sounded like Kelly Clarkson on Big Band Night compared to what came before.

A few words on each before I return to watching Olympic hockey...

Todrick Hall ("Since You've Been Gone") -- I don't even know what to say about this odd performance-- it was a total reworking of a very good song that, as the judges said, made the verses barely recognizable. Having said that, the judges are always saying that they want to see people change up songs--so it appears they only want people to change them a little bit, not too much. Looking back on this after hearing the following 11 performers, at least he showed that he had some personality, was kind of interesting to watch and had a decent voice -- which was much more than most of the group did.

Aaron Kelly ("Here Comes Goodbye") -- Wasn't this kind of the male equivalent of a bunch of female performances last night. You know, the ones that the judges said were too much like the original version, showed nothing original, etc. There was nothing wrong with it, but I didn't notice the amazing voice the judges claimed he had, either.

Jermaine Sellers ("Get Here") -- Jermaine goes with the song Justin Guarini sang about eight times on the show in season one. The beginning of the song was so soft and weak that I could barely hear him over the heating system in my apartment. Then he got loud and strange and the less said the better.

Tim Urban ("Apologize") -- Now we know why he was a late addition to the top 24. That sucked. Off key and not good.

Joe Munoz ("You and I Both") -- Who is this guy? Had we even heard him sing before tonight? I have a feeling the last time we'll hear him sing is Thursday night when he's eliminated. It was boring and he had little personality and didn't he kind of sound like he was singing in Spanish or some other language at points in the song? Or was it just me. As for Kara's statement that he should be given a show to "get his bearings," I actually agree. Except that last night, Kara was upset that she didn't know who various people will be as an artist via the song they chose. So which is it, Kara?

Tyler Grady ("American Woman") -- Yeah, so he acts like he wants to be Jim Morrison and that will get old quick, but his voice was OK and he had some personality on stage so he was at least tolerable.

Lee Dewyze ("Chasing Cars") -- I agreed with Simon, I did like his voice and thought he had a decent performance, even if I have no plans to be downloading his song from ITunes. As for Kara's suggestion that he should be doing a Bad Company song, I never want to hear anyone sing a Bad Company song (and didn't she just get through telling Tyler to not do classic rock songs but do newer songs? Doesn't she listen to herself?)

John Park ("God Bless the Child") -- Liked his marriage proposal for Shania Twain. Didn't like his flat, bland singing.

Michael Lynche ("This Love") -- Another performance with very little originality and singing that was nothing special. But, as others have written already, he's probably destined for the "big guy who seems like a nice guy" spot in the final 12 previously occupied by Matt Rogers and Matthew Sarver -- where he'll go out in the first few weeks because he has no chance of winning whatsoever.

Alex Lambert ("Wonderful World") -- This guy has negative stage presence and charisma, and in the brief clips we saw with him from Hollywood Week, that was the way he was there -- stiff as a board. So the judges should have known what they were getting. Having said that, he did have a nice, raspy, sort of Bryan Adams thing going on with his voice, although he did miss some notes.

Casey James ("Heaven") -- As I mentioned before, pretty good, but compared to the rest of the junk we were subjected to, sounded like he actually was Bryan Adams. Seems to know what he's doing, has a decent voice, and was certainly in the top two tonight.

Andrew Garcia ("Sugar We're Going Down") -- Not sure why the judges had such a problem with this. I thought it was fine -- not his "Straight Up" from Hollywood Week, but in the same vein. He just altered a much worse song. My concern is that Andrew is a one-trick pony, and his one trick will get old very quickly.

I have no idea who is going home, because there are so many who deserve to. I would send home Tim Urban and Joe Munoz, and I think that's what America will decide too.

Jewish Fact Check #9: How Stephen Walt ignores the facts

2010-02-24T13:33:00.004-05:00

Reading Stephen Walt's blog reminds me of that Simpsons episode where a cartoon version of Ed Begley, Jr. shows off his new environmentally friendly car, which he says is powered by his "own sense of self-satisfaction." Combine that with some kind of martyrdom complex, and you've got his Monday post, "On Grabbing the Third Rail."

The post is Walt's "Ten Tips for Handling a Smear Campaign," which he of course claims he has been subjected to because of his writings on the "Israel lobby. Simplifying his post to one sentence, it would be something like "If people are criticizing you, it must be because you're right -- and not because perhaps you don't know what you're talking about or actually made errors." (You should read the whole thing if you have a chance, but just be prepared to want to throw your computer out the window by the time you get about two-thirds of the way through.)

OK, maybe that's simplifying it a bit, but Walt, of course, ignores the real reason people keep criticizing him -- he continually distorts or just flat out ignores facts that he doesn't like or don't agree with his and Mearsheimer's thesis on the Isarel lobby. The best example of this comes from just last week.

Earlier in the month, Walt wrote a post entitled "I don't mean to say I told you so, but ... ", in which he proudly touted "a new piece of evidence" that had come to light strengthening his an Mearsheimer's case that the Israel lobby played a "key role" in the U.S. decision to invade Iraq. It's a quote from then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said in testimony to the Iraq war commission in the UK about a meeting he had with President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas in 2002: "As I recall that discussion, it was less to do with specifics about what we were going to do on Iraq or, indeed, the Middle East, because the Israel issue was a big, big issue at the time. I think, in fact, I remember, actually, there may have been conversations that we had even with Israelis, the two of us, whilst we were there. So that was a major part of all this." Walt then writes: "Notice that Blair is not saying that Israel dreamed up the idea of attacking Iraq or that Bush was bent on war solely to benefit Israel or even to appease the Israel lobby here at home. But Blair is acknowledging that concerns about Israel were part of the equation, and that the Israeli government was being actively consulted in the planning for the war.

The problem with that quote, as JTA's Ron Kampeas and The New Republic's John Judis point out, is that it doesn't prove in any way what Walt contends and has been totally ripped out of context. As Judis writes:

The real problem is that Walt does not seem to have taken the trouble to have read the transcript of Blair’s testimony. If he had, he would have realized that Blair was not talking about how invading Iraq might benefit Israel, but about the conflict then occurring between Israel and the Palestinians. The second intifada had reached a new height with the Passover and Haifa suicide bombings and the beginning of the siege at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and Blair was concerned that the Bush administration was not actively pursuing the peace process. Blair wanted the administration to put the Arab-Israeli issue on a par with the threat of Iraq.

Both Judis and Kampeas provide other examples -- from later in the testimony and from the press conference that followed the 2002 Crawford Blair-Bush meeting -- to show that the references to Israel had nothing to do with the Iraq situation but were about the situation in the West Bank at the time.

So I eagerly read Walt's post last week in which he said he was responding to Judis. And it was remarkable -- because, incredibly, he completely ignored the problem Judis and Kampeas identified with Walt's original post. Here's what he writes:

First, I made it clear in my post that Blair's comments were not a "smoking gun" that proved we were right, and I neither suggested nor implied that Blair's testimony demonstrated that Bush went to war at Israel's urging or to accommodate the Israel lobby. I merely noted that Blair had said that concerns about Israel were part of the discussion, and that Israeli officials were consulted as part of the conversation.

He then reproduces the quote from his original post that I mentioned above and states "In short, Judis is attacking me for claims I did not make."

OK, it's true that Walt didn't literally call the Blair remarks a "smoking gun" -- he just called his blog post "I don't mean to say I told you so, but...." and said "yet another piece of evidence surfaced that suggests we were right all along." Sure seems like Walt thought this was pretty important. If the gun wasn't smoking, that kind of trumpeting of this alleged "revelation" certainly leads one to think Walt was at the very least implying the gun was still warm. Walt at least believed the gun was still warm.

Then Walt says, "I neither suggested nor implied that Blair's testimony demonstrated that Bush went to war at Israel's urging or to accommodate the Israel lobby." Fine, he did explicitly deny he was saying that in his original post.

But then he states: "I merely noted that Blair had said that concerns about Israel were part of the discussion, and that Israeli officials were consulted as part of the conversation." But that's exactly what Judis is denying, with convincing evidence on his side. Judis and Kampeas specifically make the case that the discussion Blair was referring to had nothing specifically to do with the Iraq war, but with the completely separate issue of the second Intifada and Israel's operation at the time in the West Bank. And Israeli officials were consulted about this issue, not the Iraq war.

So when Walt claims that Judis is "attacking me for claims I did not make," the irony is that Walt is actually not even acknowledging the most persuasive claim Judis is making that he's wrong. It's the main thrust of Judis' article and Walt acts like it doesn't exist! That's why people get angry at you, Professor Walt -- you just ignore the facts, and it's infuriating.

For more evidence of Walt's dishonesty and willingness to smear his critics, check out this blog post I wrote last month.

The last season of Idol as we know it begins

2010-02-23T22:39:00.003-05:00

I've avoided blogging about it so far, but now that we're down to the top 24, I guess it's time to start blogging American Idol again -- especially because with Simon leaving, this is the lastyear of AI as we know it. Before we get into the singers, though, I must say that after the first Hollywood episode, when everyone was praising Ellen DeGeneres for how good she was as a judge, I should have blogged what I was thinking then--which was judging the few, edited clips of Ellen they showed is not a true picture of the judge Ellen will be on the weekly live shows. And tonight I didn't really find that she had much insightful or interesting to say at all. In fact, I kept thinking all night when we went to the judges what I thought most of last year: "Why again did we need four judges?" Just like last year, when Paula seemed to step up her game with Kara around, I did think that both Kara and Randy stepped it up tonight--Randy occasionally offering an insightful comment, and Kara not being nearly as annoying with her "artistry" crap as last year. The only thing I can remember about Ellen tonight is the opening bit--which was funny when she talked about Simon being into her, and then became unfunny quickly with that videotaped bit with the hands on the leg, which looked like a bit that Jay Leno rejected.

As far as the singers, my general impression was that it's a very attractive group of women, most of whom are solid singers. No clear frontrunner, but a bunch with breakout potential. As for Ryan's comment when the show started that we "know this group better at this stage of the competition" than others," I have no idea what he's talking about. There were four or five people tonight I'd either never heard sing or heard no more than 20 seconds of singing from them over the last five weeks. Yeah, I know that Katelyn Epperly's parents got divorced and Didi Benami's friend died and Katie Stevens' grandmother has Alzheimer's, but don't we know that kind of stuff about a handful of the Idols every year?

Paige Miles ("It's All Right Now")--What an strange, bad choice of song. Not a strong melody, and the chorus is the same thing repeated over and over. Even worse, the backup singers drowned her out or sung instead of her on the chorus. I know Simon says she has the best voice of the women, but while her singing wasn't bad, she didn't really show me anything memorable. Combine the fact that she went first in a two-hour show, we didn't know anything about her before tonight, and her clip at the end of the show was mostly of the chorus singing, and I think she's in danger of going home.

Ashley Rodriguez ("Happy")-- Didn't think it was the montrosity that the judges thought it was, but it was unoriginal and predictable. She's pretty, though.

Janell Wheeler ("What About Love?")-- She's pretty, too, and apparently is Tim Tebow's ex-girlfriend. (I hope her position on abortion, whatever it may be, doesn't become an issue....) That was not good. I really liked Janell doing "American Boy" during Hollywood Week, but her Taylor Swift song later in the week wasn't very good, and this was disappointing. Ellen, apparently taking the Paula role, praised her for how she "moved easily on stage." Yes, she at least didn't fall down. That kind of sums it up for Janell.

Lily Scott ("Fixing A Hole")--That was really cool. Unique voice, good choice of song, sounded great. Not sure what to make of Kara's comment that the best thing for a singer is to stand on the street and busk. Really? When I come out of the Metro and see someone busking, sometimes I enjoy it, sometimes I don't, but I never think, "We really need someone singing on every street corner." Oh, well. I was disturbed, though, at the way Kara seemed so excited that Simon put his hand on her leg. Didn't I read you got married, Kara?

Katelyn Epperly ("Oh, Darling") -- I thought Katelyn was one of the weaker singers in the final 12 women, but that was surprisingly good. Yeah, her voice isn't as powerful or unique as some others, but the whole thing worked for me. An offbeat song choice, a fun performance and she looked cute--unlike Kara, I didn't mind that she tarted herself up. But at least Kara called herself a bitch--that was satisfying.

Haeley Vaughn ("I Want to Hold Your Hand")-- When they announced what Haeley's song was, I said, "Oh, no. Why would you do that?" And yet, I actually liked Haeley's arrangement of the song. I just didn't like Haeley's singing of the song, which was screechy and pitchy and all over the place. Yeah, Haeley's different, but she's 16 and way too young and has no chance of coming close to winning this thing. Too bad they didn't tell her to come back next year with another year under her belt, and give her slot to poor Angela Martin, who had a sad story and was a better singer.

Lacey Brown ("Landslide") -- Lacey, let me give you some advice. For your first song on the semifinals of American Idol, why would you pick a song that was sung by Stevie Nicks, one of the most distinctive female rock vocalists of the last few decades, and has also been covered by another hugely popular and distinctive singer in Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks? What chance did you have of doing anything that would make us forget them? And when she said that she chose the song beacuse it
"speaks to me as a person," I realized that she hasn't read my blog over the past few years. How many times have I said that you pick a song for how it makes your voice sound, not because you like the lyrics? You can worry about the lyrics once you win. Anyway, it was boring and kind of off-key and a big mess.

Michelle Delamor ("Fallin") -- This song should have been banned from American Idol by now--we must have heard it 40 times, especially in the audition rounds. Having said that, she did a solid but unspectacular job on it, even though the backup singers were too dominant at times. Since I don't remember hearing her sing previously on the FIVE WEEKS I've already sat through, I hope we get to hear her sing again on a less familiar song.

Didi Benami ("The Way I Am")-- Didi was my favorite coming into tonight for a number of reasons. That version of Kara's song "Terrified" she did with a guitar during Hollywood Week was terrific, she's quite attractive, and she's apparently Jewish. (The name Benami is Hebrew meaning "son of the people," and her given first name is "Vered," which is also Hebrew for rose.) But I was a little disappointed tonight--she left the guitar home, did a song I hadn't heard before and did an OK but nothing special job with it. In fact, she kind of reminded me of Megan Joy from last year--in that she sang an offbeat song in an offbeat way--and that's not a good thing. I hope she steps it up next week. (OK, I actually voted a couple times for her--just wanted to make a full disclosure.)

Siobhan Magnus ("Wicked Game")-- Wow, she's a glassblowing apprentice. Who knew there stil was such a thing? The first two lines of the song were terrible for Siobhan, but as Randy would say, I thought she "worked it out" and the rest of the song was quite good, different and vocally solid. I'm intrigued.

Crystal Bowersox ("Hand in My Pocket")-- I've never really liked this song, but Crystal kind of made me like it. The guitar, the harmonica, the vocals--all of it worked for me. Simon is correct, though--she does have to do something to surprise us, not just sing acoustic versions of female singer-songwriter hits. I hope she can do that.

Katie Stevens ("Feelin Good") -- Love when American Idol announces that a song was by, in this instance, Michael Buble, when someone else, in this case Nina Simone, actually popularized the song and Buble is only the most recent to do it. Then again, of all the things wrong with American Idol, this is probably the least important. Anyway, Katie did OK, and with her being in the "pimp spot," it's obvious the producers want her to advance. She's got a nice, rich voice, but it was kind of a strange choice of song for a 17-year-old, as the judges said. On the other hand, it always seems like when the judges say that, they're implying that they want her to sing a Britney song or something. Why? Maybe she's showing that she wants to be a artist who sings jazz songs. It's not going to win her American Idol, but it's still a persona as an artist...

Who's going home? This is tough, but I'll say Lacey Brown and Paige Miles, for the aforementioned reasons, although I wouldn't rule out Haeley Vaughn or Ashley Rodriguez either. But the word Haeley was trending on Twitter a little while ago, so she's probably safe (unless everyone's tweeting about how bad she was, in which case I have no idea.)

Fingerhut out!

Jewish Fact Check #8: Glenn Greenwald and "revolting provenance"

2010-02-23T13:45:00.006-05:00

I don't necessarily want to keep harping on this issue of critics of Israel falsely claiming they can't talk about Israel without being accused of anti-Semitism, but if writers like Glenn Greenwald keep writing things that distort and misinterpret what others have written, I guess I have no choice.

Greenwald's Feb. 18 article in Salon is mostly a strange attack on Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), but I'll get to that later. First, though, let's look at this passage in Greenwald's piece:

...you'd best keep in mind the stern warnings issued last week by Jonathan Chait and Jeffrey Goldberg: namely, the mere suggestion that some Americans favor U.S. aggression in the Muslim world due to concerns about Israel, rather than the U.S., has a "revolting provenance" that "should disgust all thinking people." Thus, while quasi-clearing Andrew Sullivan of anti-semitism charges, they warned all of us that one had better be extremely careful in how one discusses such matters (as Sullivan failed to do) lest one be justifiably (even if wrongly) accused of anti-Semitism

So Greenwald is saying that Chait and Goldberg (actually, Goldberg merely linked approvingly to Chait's piece) claim that even uttering the fact that concerns about Israel enter into some Americans' views of the Middle East is evidence of possible anti-Semitism. Greenwald would be right, that would be ridiculous -- except The New Republic's Chait never wrote anything of the sort. Here's what Chait did write:

Leon notes, correctly, that Andrew has begun repeating tropes that happen to track classic anti-Semitic canards. His obsession with the singular power of the Israel lobby, writes Leon "has a provenance that should disgust all thinking people." Agreed. But just because an idea has a revolting provenance, it does not follow that everybody who subscribes to any version of it shares the same motive.

Chait didn't write that anyone who makes the "mere suggestion that some Americans favor U.S. aggression in the Muslim world due to concerns about Israel" is guilty of holding an idea with a "revolting provenance," he said that an obsession with the "singular power of the Israeli lobby" has an "revolting provenance." Being obsessed with the "singular power of the Israeli lobby"--that means thinking the Israel lobby is the most powerful lobby in the U.S., bar none. That means believing that the Israeli lobby is much more powerful than the farm lobby or the gun lobby or anything else, that it alone drives the decisionmaking of the United States in the Middle East. Yeah, some people may believe this, but it's simply not true. And that view does have a "revolting provenance"--it's an obvious echo of the anti-Semitic trope that Jews are pulling the strings, controlling the world. And yet Greenwald somehow equates having an obsession with the "singular power of the Israeli lobby" with "the mere suggestion that some Americans favor U.S. aggression in the Muslim world due to concerns about Israel." It's hard to believe a guy like Greenwald, who makes his living writing and using words, could so obviously misconstrue someone else's article--unless he was just trying to make a political point.

The main thrust of Greenwald's piece, though, is his thoughts on a nine and a half-minute speech Rep. Gary Ackerman gave to Jewish groups in New York. He writes that after listening to the speech: "It's simply impossible to deny that this highly influential American Congressman, devoted to pushing the U.S. to war with Iran, is driven, at least in substantial part, by his fervent devotion to Israel. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but there is much wrong with trying to force people to pretend it's not true."

First, a couple of facts. Ackerman, of course, devotes about 30 seconds to Iran in the speech highlighted, and says nothing about war or military action. He simply says that Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is a "worry" and "concern." Does anyone seriously disagree with that? Ackerman has supported sanctions on the Iranian regime, but has not endorsed a military strike. In fact, earlier this month, he counseled "patience" in trying to figure out how to support the dissident movement in Iran while also hastening the demise of the regime. (Greenwald is likely thinking of a resolution Ackerman sponsored two years ago, which critics said was "an act of war" but which Ackerman said was no such thing, while also pointing out that it was a non-binding resolution merely advocated increased economic and political pressure on the regime.)

Second, in all of Greenwald's fury over Ackerman's defense of Israel in the speech over the Goldstone Report and other matters, the Salon writer ignores the most interesting part of Ackerman's speech: the passage in which he urges Israel to negotatiate a settlement with the Palestinians, something I'd think Greenwald would want to hear. The New York congressman talks about how Israel currently has a "qualitative edge" in military technology, but such an edge will get increasingly smaller. "Time is not friendly to you if you're winning the race," he said. "Cut your deal, get the best deal when you're ahead," he continues, adding that Israel
"has to figure out a way to get the Palestinians back to the table and talk peace."

But Greenswald's main point is this "It's simply impossible to deny that this highly influential American Congressman, devoted to pushing the U.S. to war with Iran, is driven, at least in substantial part, by his fervent devotion to Israel. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but there is much wrong with trying to force people to pretend it's not true."

Who exactly is trying to pretend that's not true? Everyone knows Gary Ackerman is Jewish and a supporter of Israel. No one is denying that. And no one can deny -- or is denying -- that the pro-Isarel community has been leading the call for sanctions on Iran. I sure won't. But why exactly is it so important to point this out? Yes, stopping Iran from acquiring nukes would be good for Israel. It's also an outcome that's desired by all the other nations in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia. And it's also a major concern o the United States--it has the potential of destabilizing the Middle East, where the U.S. gets a lot of its oil, and could allow Iran to fund terrorism throughout the world with impunity--knowing that it has a nuclear threat to prevent retaliation. So why are the alleged motivations of increased pressure on Iran so important. Greenwald, and those who agree with him, could argue that those things don't matter, or that such threats are exaggerated, or that it's no big deal if Iran gets nukes. Fine. But why is it so important to identify and make part of the argument the background of the other side? Is it because they can't respond to the other side's arguments?

Jewish Fact Check #7: Where Joe Klein proves my point from Jewish Fact Check #6

2010-02-19T10:57:00.005-05:00

Wow. When I wrote my blog post earlier this week pointing out that critics of Israel seem to take pride in being called "anti-Semite," even to the point of exaggerating or making up accusations of anti-Semitism, I never dreamed that three days later I would read something that would make my point even better than any of the examples I used in the original post.

Not surprisingly, it comes from Joe Klein, who I also cited as an example in my original post. He wrote a column for Time Magazine which began by recounting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech to the U.S.-Islamic Conference in Doha on Sunday, and her statement that a solution to the blockade of Gaza can only come with a comprehensive settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Klein writes that's the "wrong answer" and suggests that when he came into office, instead of trying for a comprehensive settlement, President Obama should have tried solving the Gaza crisis first. Klein then argues that the White Hosue needs to "engage" Hamas.

That brought a retort from Commentary's Jonathan Tobin, who calls that a bad idea and says that "what Klein fails to understand is that no matter who sits in the White House, it is not in America’s interest to rescue the killers of Hamas. Rather, it should be our policy to isolate and hopefully oust them from power." Tobin, while criticizing Obama's general foreign policy, even praises the president and Clinton for opposing any engagement with Hamas.

Tobin's post seemed like a fairly standard, relatively innocuous blogosphere post , but it brought an bizarre, almost unhinged response from Klein, in an "update" to an ealrier blog post linking to his column. It has to be read in full to be believed. It begins: "The neocon extremists over at Commentary have wasted no time responding to my column with their usual bile and bullying." He then goes to on identify a couple minor errors in Tobin's piece and claims something is an error that really isn't (he says that Tobin said he blamed Israel for the Gaza situation; in fact, Tobin says Klein blamed Israel for "Obama's acknowledged failure in the Middle East," which was obviously a reference to Klein's line "U.S. envoy George Mitchell's slow-moving effort to start talks tanked because of Israel's unwillingness to stop building illegal settlements on Palestinian land.") And he reiterates some of the points he made in the column

Then Klein writes this:

My suggestions--or their distorted burlesque of my suggestions--are, apparently, what passes for anti-Israel extremism over at Commentary. But anything that doesn't conform to their half-crazed macho crusaderism is seen as either anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. Their constant fury, their slightly-veiled calumnies against the President--and against the very notion of diplomacy--would be laughable if they weren't so dangerous and disgraceful.

Whoa! Anti-Israel? Anti-Semitic? Where'd you get that, Joe? Tobin's piece said your proposal to engage with Hamas was a bad one because it wasn't in America's interest to help out terrorists. Tobin may be right, he may be wrong, but he never said anything about you being "anti-Israel" or "anti-Semitic" anywhere in the piece. He didn't even imply it. He just didn't like your ideas, and didn't like your statement that Israel was at fault for the failure of George Mitchell's efforts. But in your attempt to make yourself out to be some courageous truth-teller, you claim you've been smeared -- when you're the one doing the smearing.

Klein lowers himself even further when he writes that "the barely concealed anti-Arab bigotry so frequently found on the Commentary blog, reveals itself in this sentence: That answer pleased neither the Arabs nor Klein," a sentence which referred to Clinton's answer when asked about Gaza. Klein accurately points out that he was attending a U.S.-Islamic forum in which Arabs were just about half of the delegates. I'm not sure how that mistake is clear and convincing evidence of "anti-Arab bigotry," but it would be a bad mistake on Tobin's part. Except that here's what Klein writes in his column: "Clinton's tough talk on Iran got most of the U.S. headlines, but her position on Gaza was far more important to the Islamic participants at Doha, especially the Arabs."

In other words, Klein specifically said that those at the U.S.-Islamic forum who were most interested, and thus obviously the most disappointed, by Clinton's remarks on Gaza were the Arab delegates. Should Tobin have said Muslims? It would have been better. But in using Arabs, he was only following Klein's lead.

I used to really like Joe Klein as a writer. And I was really impressed about a decade ago when I saw him speak at a local synagogue. It was around the time of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, and in part of his talk he discussed his view that personal matters were getting way too much attention in politics and destroying Washington. I asked him how he could make this argument when a few years earlier he had written an really interesting article for Newsweek on Bill Clinton (I think it was titled "The Politics of Promiscuity") in which he argued that Bill Clinton as a president was like Bill Clinton in his private life--promiscuous and unable to stick to one woman or one idea. I gained a lot of respect for Klein when he answered, "I was wrong" and that he shouldn't have written that article. But after his most recent attack, I've lost most of that respect. Hopefully, he'll admit he's wrong this time, too.

Why Marc Thiessen doesn't seem to be a very good columnist (aka Hockey Fact Check #1)

2010-02-18T13:41:00.004-05:00

There seems to be a lot of people upset that the Washington Post has hired former Bush speechwriter Marc A. Thiessen as a new weekly columnist, primarily because he's been a strong proponent of torture and has even written a book defending it (although if you read the comments bashing him below his first column, you'd think he'd personally waterboarded prisoners at Gitmo.)

Sure, I find it a little odd that after hiring former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson to write an op-ed column, the Post would a couple years later hire another former Bush speechwriter -- but if the guy has something interesting to say and a fresh way of saying it, why not? Unfortunately, I read his first column, which is about hockey -- something I know a lot more about than torture. And if it's a preview of what's to come, Thiessen won't be a very good columnist, because all he does is demonstrate that he has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to hockey.

Thiessen's argument in his column, "Don't expect miracles in Vancouver," is that it's too bad professional hockey players now participate in the Olympics, because we can never have a repeat of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" team, where a U.S. team of college kids and other amateur players knocked off the greatest hockey team in the word from the Soviet Union. As he writes:

If Team USA defeats Russia in the Vancouver Olympics, Max and I will be cheering -- but I doubt a generation of children yet-to-be born will be celebrating the victory decades from now. The Miracle on Ice is considered one of the greatest moments in U.S. sports history not just because of the cold war backdrop, but because a bunch of college kids took on the greatest hockey team in the world and won. If the American squad had been made up of NHL players, it's unlikely that they would have inspired a blockbuster movie, or that we'd be marking the anniversary of their win.

That's a noble, good-hearted sentiment, but it completely ignores reality -- and history.

First of all, the Olympics now, as opposed to 30 years ago, doesn't require amateurism (or not earning money from your sport) in order to participate. All the top Olympic athletes in every sport are professionals. But even if the NHL decided it won't allow its players to participate in the Olympics, that wouldn't mean that we'd ever get a repeat of anything close to the "Miracle on Ice." Back in 1980, while the Western nations could only send amateurs, the Eastern bloc nations were somehow able to skirt those rules and send their best professional hockey players to the Olympics (I think they claimed, for instance, that their top team, the Soviet Red Army team, actually earned their money by working for the army or something--I never really undestood this, but somehow the Soviets got away with it.) But 30 years later, with no Iron Curtain, almost all the best Russian hockey players are now playing in the NHL. So if the NHL didn't send its players to the Olympics, you'd have a bunch of U.S. college kids competing against a bunch of Russian college kids, young players who haven't left for the NHL yet -- and maybe a few past-their-prime Russians now playing in the top Russian league, like a 40-year-old Sergei Fedorov. You think that would inspire a movie or an anniversary commemoration? Don't think so.

But more than that lack of knowledge of history or hockey, what annoyed me about Thiessen's piece was his line that "for the sake of hockey fans and for the sake of the NHL," the NHL should decide not to send its players to the next Olympics. Now there is a solid argument -- even if I don't agree with it -- for why the NHL should consider not sending NHL players to the Sochi, Russia Olympics in 2014. Thiessen doesn't even really make it.

He does mentions the risk of injuries -- which is of some concern but I think is somewhat blown out of proportion. At the most, it's six extra games, and of course there is the risk of injury. But there's a risk of injury in every game when the players return to the NHL, too. That's just sports. The actual good argument that the NHL has in its quiver is its concern that shutting down its league for two weeks during the stretch run of the season in February may not be worth it financially, considering the lack of benefit the league gets from it. The NHL originally agreed to shut down the season every four years for the Olympics because they hoped it would show off their most talented players to the much bigger television audience that the Olympics provides. But with the games either being broadcast live in the middle of the night (as in Nagano in 1998 and likely in 2014 in Sochi) or never being shown -- or on most nights even mentioned -- on the NBC prime-time broadcast but instead totally shunted off to NBC's sister networks like USA and CNBC like this year, they wonder whether they're getting any exposure except to diehard hockey fans. The disrespect from NBC has gotten even worse in the last two days--six out of the seven games played as I write this have been joined in progress in the first period either because curling went into overtime or CNBC was showing the last five minutes of a 13-0 women's hockey game. I actually think even with the indignities heaped upon the NHL, though, this Olympic tournament will help the NHL in the long run. The league hasn't had this many young, exciting stars in as long as I can remember, and a potential Russia-Canada meeting in the gold medal game would only pump up the Ovechkin-Crosby rivalry even more for what hopefully will be meeting this spring in the playoffs.

But even if the NHL doesn't get that much benefit from these games, I don't care -- because I'm a hockey fan. That's what makes me so angry about Thieseen's piece, that he claims that not sending NHL players to the Olympics is somehow the best thing for hockey fans. Thiessen is apparently not an actual hockey fan, because any true fan of the sport wants to see the best players in the world. And he's not going to be a very good columnist, because he doesn't even try to refute -- or even acknowledge -- his opponents' best argument.

Thiessen argues that the Olympics should be reserved for seeing up and coming stars in college and junior hockey, because that level of hockey doesn't get the exposure that college basketball and football get. Well, yeah, because hockey in the U.S. just isn't as popular a sport as football and basketball are. But if you want to see college and junior hockey, ESPNU and ESPN broadcast the Frozen Four and other games in the NCAA hockey tournament, and the NHL Network broadcast much of the World Junior Championships this past December and January. If Thiessen wants to see those tournaments, he now knows where to find them.

In the Olympics, why shouldn't we want to see great hockey? The Olympic hockey tournament is any hockey fan's dream -- Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the USA all with teams loaded with NHL stars playing not in some all-star game where no one cares who wins, but for an Olympic gold medal. It features great skating, skill and goaltending and intense games. Missing out on such games would be good for hockey fans? How exactly? People have been talking about this tournament for weeks--and have you seen how excited Canadian fans are for it?

Thiessen argues that NHL players wouldn't trade a Stanley Cup for Olympic gold. That may be true for most players, but it's not a clear-cut call in many cases. (In fact, Alex Ovechkin has repeatedly refused to say which is more important, saying he wants to win both, and saying only, "The Olympics is first, then the Stanley Cup.") This isn't like tennis, for instance in the Olympics, where any player would rather win Wimbledon than a gold medal. Hockey has a great tradition of international games. One of the most famous moments in Canadian sports history in Paul Henderson's goal with 34 seconds left to win the 1972 Summit Series for Canada over Russia. That led to the international Canada Cup tournaments in the 1970s and 1980s featuring professional players. And of course, being part of Team USA still is a huge thing for any American hockey player who lived through or even heard stories of the Miracle on Ice.

I'm going to watch the end of the USA-Norway game and get excited for the Russia-Slovakia game later tonight. I hope if Thiessen really is a hockey fan he'll be watching too. I can only hope that Thiessen decides to write about torture in his next column for the Post. He's got to know more about that than he does about hockey, right?

Jewish Fact Check #6: Who's really using the term "anti-Semite"?

2010-02-16T14:48:00.003-05:00

"There they go, flinging around baseless charges of anti-Semitism again." That was the general thrust of many responses to last week's piece by Leon Wieseltier on Andrew Sullivan, that supporters of Israel (or "neocons") were allegedly once again smearing critics of the Jewish state as anti-Semites rather than arguing their case fairly. I found this charge a little odd, considering that in his more than 4,000 word piece, Wieseltier only uses the term "anti-Semite" or "anti-Semitic" in reference to Sullivan once -- in reference to Sullivan's depiction of a "Goldfarb-Krauthammer wing" of the Jewish community, Wieseltier writes that the idea that "every thought that a Jew thinks is a Jewish thought is an anti-Semitic assumption, and a rather classical one." Yes, the insinuation of anti-Semitism by Sullivan runs through much of the piece, but the fact that Wieseltier doesn't actually use the term must mean something, doesn't it? Wouldn't one think that writers, who making their living through words, would at least find that noteworthy? But they didn't seem to notice.(Wieseltier, in a response to Sullivan's response to him, has since written, "I did not propose that he is an anti-Semite. I did propose that the scorn and the fury that characterizes his discussion of Israel and some of its Jewish supporters is wholly unwarranted by the requirements of a critical analysis of the settlements or the Gaza war, and that it may therefore be mistaken for bigotry.")

In fact, the whole Wieseltier-Sullivan episode has served to illustrate an emerging trend among critics of Israel: Their eagerness to allege that they've been accused of being an anti-Semite. I do agree that some of Israel's defenders are too quick to throw out charges of anti-Semitism or "self-hating Jew," and that's lamentable and a problem. But it seems that among many of Israel's critics, claiming that you've been accused of being an anti-Semite has become some sort of bizarre badge of honor. And quite a few of those that have allegedly been accused of being an anti-Semite, according to Wieseltier's critics, either were never smeared with such a term or were only accused of making a specific problematic remark and not tarred with some broad brush of disliking Jews, as they claim.

The best example of this overheated "He called me an anti-Semite" charge is a column by Glenn Greenwald last week. Early in the article, he writes: "As Charles Freeman can attest, frivolous anti-semitism accusations can still damage those seeking high-level political positions, but those accusations no longer pack any real punch in virtually any other realm" and later gives us this paragraph:

If The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan, and Time's Joe Klein, and Foreign Policy's Stephen Walt, and the University of Chicago's John Mearsheimer, and Gen. Wes Clark (a TNR target), and Howard Dean, and former President Jimmy Carter, and a whole slew of others like them are "anti-semites," then how terrible of an insult is it?

So let's examine a few of Greenwal'd alleged victims. First we have the oddest name on this list, Howard Dean. Yes, when running for president in 2003-04, Howard Dean was criticized for some remarks he made about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. But I couldn't remember any point where he was referred to as an anti-Semite. Well, in fact, the Salon article that Greenwald links to in order to apparently make his case on Dean doesn't even include the words "anti-Semite" or "anti-Semitism" anywhere in its more than 2,000 words. Yes, the article includes people, inside and outside the Jewish community, criticizing Dean as insufficiently supportive of Israel. That criticism may have been overheated or somewhat unfair -- but no one ever said Dean was anti-Semitic. In fact, the article makes the point that the most vocal critic of Dean was John Kerry, who last time I checked isn't a neocon and isn't Jewish (and for you smart alecks, yes, his paternal grandfather was Jewish, but Kerry isn't.) Dean was being criticized for his position on Israel by another candidate in the heat of a presidential primary contest. It happens all the time on many issues -- and it's called politics.

How about Charles Freeman? There were a lot of words written about Freeman's eventually aborted nomination to the National Intelligence Council, from the Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb, former AIPACer Steve Rosen, and The New Republic's Jonathan Chait, among others. Some of these pieces criticized Freeman's "realist" approach to foreign policy, some his opinions and feelings about Israel. Did some of the things written about Freeman unfairly distort his past writings? Sure, and that's not good, but that happens on issues in Washington every day. Was there a legitimate argument to be made that too much focus was being put on Freeman's opinions on the Middle East, and that it shouldn't matter for his appoitment to this intelligence post? Sure. But the only -- and please, we're not counting someone's anonymous comment left at the bottom of a Politico article or something -- mainstream figure to ever make any kind of argument that Freeman had any hostility to Jews was Marty Peretz, who wrote that the former ambassador had a "hostility to Jews generally." That line is unfortunate -- and also completely unrepresentative of the vast majority of criticism of Freeman, but was seized upon by his defenders as the only statement that really mattered about Freeman. (Accusations of anti-Semitism later were made about Freeman, but only after his bizarre screed blaming the "Israel lobby" for his withdrawal.)

Let's move on to Joe Klein, who claims he was called an anti-Semite by the ADL's Abe Foxman. Actually, he wasn't. Here's what Joe Klein originally wrote that raised the ire of Foxman:

The notion that we could just waltz in and inject democracy into an extremely complicated, devout and ancient culture smacked--still smacks--of neocolonialist legerdemain. The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives--people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary--plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.

Foxman objected to Klein's reference to "Jewish" neoconservatives and his use of the term "divided loyalties" and wrote this: "The notion that Jews with 'divided loyalties' were behind the decision to go to war is reminiscent of age-old anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish conspiracy to control and manipulate government..." That's the only time Foxman uses the term "anti-Semitic" in his letter, and it's hard to argue that he's using it incorrectly. Klein says, pretty clearly, that some American Jews supported the war in Iraq, and are supporting another with Iran, because of "dual loyalties," and accusing Jews of dual loyalties is, as Foxman writes, an "age-old anti-Semitic canard."

Klein's response is essentially to say he was telling the truth--and then rip Foxman for calling him an "anti-Semite"--but he never actually proves that what he says is the truth. His examples are "people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd at Commentary" but he offers no links or quotes to substantiate that claim. (As far as I'm aware, Joe Lieberman never said the U.S. needed to go to war to "make the world safe for Israel," and I'm not sure who he means by the Commentary crowd--those who wrote there in 2003, before the war? Those who were there in 2008, when he wrote the blog item at issue? Klein and his defenders would likely respond that he's referring to American Jews who are strong supporters of Israeli security that also strongly backed the war. OK, fine--but while the (now discredited) neoconservative theory which apparently animated the war would have no doubt made Israel's neighborhood safer if it had worked, the idea was that it would spur the rest of the Middle East to go democratic, which would benefit the U.S. in innumerable ways (from cheaper oil to not having to be militarily involved there anymore--after all, it's not like the U.S. was new to the region, we'd fought a war in Iraq already 12 years earlier!) Klein's contention that it was simply to benefit Israel is something he just asserts with no proof--and therefore is, as Foxman argues, reminiscent of an age-old canard. That doesn't mean he's an anti-Semite, just that he used inappropriate language. It's similar to what happened with Bill Clinton in South Carolina in 2008. He was accused of making a racially-charged remark, but no one seriously believes Bill Clinton is a racist. (Oh, by the way, here's Joe Klein calling Clinton's remarks a "racial jab." So is Joe Klein saying Bill Clinton is a racist? And here's TNR's Chait saying Commentary's Jennifer Rubin used a "classic anti-Semitic trope" in describing why Jews don't like Sarah Palin. He wasn't saying that the Jewish Rubin is an anti-Semite, just that she was using that language--and no one seemed to complain.)

Finally, Sullivan himself -- unintentionally -- best illustrates this point with a Monday blog post about Johann Hari entitled "What Often Happents to Israel's Critics, Part 1." He finds a 2008 column by British journalist Hari, who had written a column charging that sewage from Israeli settlements was poisoning the water of Palestinian reservoirs and was outraged by the reaction. He claims that "there was little attempt to dispute the facts I offered. Instead, some of the most high profile 'pro-Israel' writers and media monitoring groups – including Honest Reporting and Camera – said I an anti-Jewish bigot akin to Joseph Goebbels and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

So I eagerly googled Honest Reporting's piece attacking Hari and found hardly anything to substantiate Hari's claim. Midway trough an 888-word blog post, the phrase "modern day 'poisoning the wells' libel" is used. Some hyperbole that would have been better left out? Yes. But the other 882 words in the post are indeed a lengthy attempt to "dispute the facts" that Hari offered. There's a charge that Hari used a fabricated quote from David Ben-Gurion, that he gets the history of Israel wrong, and that the Palestinians are equally to blame for polluting the West Bank. I don't know who's correct on these issues, but for Hari to claim that the Honest Reporting piece compared him to Goebbels and didn't address his arguments is simply not true. (And the CAMERA piece is much the same.)

None of this excuses the responsibility of some of Israel's defenders to be less eager to throw out the anti-Semitism charge. But here we have examples of four different public figures who were supposedly victims of the charge of anti-Semitism -- except that the charges are either false or wildly exaggerated. Which leaves the question: Why exactly has claiming you've been called an anti-Semite become so cool lately? Could it be that those claiming they've been called anti-Semites find it easier to do that that actually defend their positions with facts?

More on this issue later in the week.

Jewish Fact Check #5: Obama, Israel and Haiti relief

2010-02-01T18:18:00.004-05:00

Despite that old saying, "But is it good for the Jews," sometimes we need to remember that's it's not all about us. That's certainly the case when we talk about aid to post-earthquake Haiti.

I saw this blog post by The New Republic's Marty Peretz entitled "Maybe I'm Getting Paranoid .... About Obama" and thought, "Yes, Marty is getting paranoid about Obama." Basically, Peretz posits that the president was snubbing Israel because the Jewish state was not one of the six countries Obama mentioned in a list of those supplying aid to Haiti in a Jan. 15 speech:

At the airport, help continues to flow in, not just from the United States but from Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic, among others.

Peretz notes that "next to our country, Israel sent the largest contingent of trained rescue workers, doctors, and other medical personnel," and adds that "the Israeli field hospital was the only one on the ground that could perform real surgery," and then argues that the reason Obama didn't mention Israel is because Arab states hadn't made a contribution equivalent to Israel's.

But I decided to not ignore it any longer after the Zionist Organization of America repeated Peretz's claims in a press release Monday entitled "ZOA Critical Of President Obama's Omission Of Israel From Among Countries Helping Haiti." (It's not up on the group's Web site yet--I will link when it appears.) The release also reiterates Peretz's questionable supposition that the omission of Israel somehow had to do with Obama's unwillingness to offend the Arab side in the Middle East peace process.

Let's leave aside the accuracy of that comparison (while maybe not as much as Israel, a bunch of Arab states did in fact send aid, as catalogued here, although apparently the Saudis had to be shamed to contribute $50 million), and just look at a couple important facts here.

First, as this Associated Press article from Jan. 13 notes, by the day after the earthquake, 16 countries had already pledged aid. So realistically, the president couldn't name every country, or it would have been a very boring speech (and by Jan. 15, when Obama gave the speech, the number had surely risen from 16). He did say "among others," after all--it's not like he ever implied that the countries he named were only the ones giving aid. And let's look at who he did name. All except one are immediate neighbors of Haiti, located in either North or South America (Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and, of course, the Dominican Republic, which is located on the same island). The only other country he names is France, which, of course, has a long history with Haiti. He didn't name the Netherlands, who sent $3 million and a 60 person rescue team, for instance -- or Great Britain or Spain or, for obvious reasons, Cuba.

But the main reason why the suspicion about Obama's motives is unwarranted is this glaring fact: According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Israeli aid team landed in Haiti on the evening of Jan. 15. That's right, around the same time -- or perhaps a couple hours after -- Obama actually gave the speech. So that means that all the truly great work that Israelis did in Haiti -- the work in the field hospital, the rescuse of someone trapped in the rubble more than a week after the quake -- all occurred AFTER the Obama speech which Peretz cites. Sure, Israel had announced that they were sending a field hospital and rescue personnel, but they hadn't actually done anything yet. So citing the great accomplishments of Israel in Haiti and then wondering how Obama overlooked them -- when the only way he could have mentioned them in that Jan. 15 speech is if he had time-traveled to the end of January -- is ridiculous.

In their press release, ZOA unwittingly proves this point by contrasting Obama's remarks with former President Bill Clinton, who was quoted in a Haaretz piece telling Israeli President Shimon Peres, "I don't know what we would have done without the Israeli hospital at Haiti." Of course, the article is from January 29, and Clinton made the remarks the previous day at the Davos economic forum.

So if you want to be upset at Obama, you can criticize him for leading with a settlement freeze in the Middle East and then, when it seemed to backfire, apparently not having a Plan B. You can criticize him for botching health care reform, by spending way too much time talking about how health reform will magically lead to fewer tests and fewer pills, when he should have been talking about real people, and how health reform would mean you won't lose your health insurance when you lose your job and you'll be able to actually get coverage even if you have a pre-existing condition. But don't get mad at him for somehow snubbing Israel in his list of countries that helped Haiti--because it just didn't happen.

Jewish Fact Check #4: Rush Limbaugh and the Jews

2010-01-29T11:12:00.003-05:00

With the advent of Media Matters, there seems to be far too much attention paid to every utterance by Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk-show hosts. Yes, Limbaugh is an extraordinarily influential political commentator, but he's just that--a commentator who hosts a talk show and whose first responsibility is to entertain his audience for three hours a day. He's not an elected official, or running for office, and I'm not sure why every time he says something controversial, Republican officeholders are urged to condemn it. (Do Democratic officeholders get asked to denounce every wacky thing Keith Olbermann says, or that appears on the Daily Kos Web site? Of course not, and they shouldn't be.)

But people keep talking about it--the latest is a group of Jewish organizations, generally on the right of the spectrum, who have come to Rush's defense--so I thought it would be worthwhile to at least look at what exactly Rush said. Was it "borderline anti-Semitic"? In my opinion, that's pushing it. But was it foolish and somewhat offensive? Yes.

I don't know Rush Limbaugh, and I have no reason to believe he holds any animus towards Jews. And while I've never heard him discuss Israel, I believe what his defenders have said, that he's been a supporter of the Jewish state. But it appears that what was a clumsy attempt to reprhase the old joke that "Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans" resulted in him actually reiterating a old anti-Semitic trope.

First, though, the kookiest thing Rush said was here:

Scott Brown had a lot of success with independents, and that’s -- that’s what Jewish liberals like to call themselves when they’re asked. They call themselves independents before they’ll refer to themselves as -- as liberals. So if Jewish people who voted 78 percent for Obama -- which is far higher than any other group except African-Americans -- if Jewish people gave Obama 78 percent of their vote, what if they’re experiencing buyer’s remorse like all these people in Massachusetts did? Do you realize how important this could be? …

Jewish liberals like to call themselves independents? Where does this happen? Has Rush actually talked to a Jewish liberal who called himself an independent, because I haven't. In fact, I've heard a couple Jewish conservatives call themselves independents because they might not want to be known as conservatives in the overwhelmingly liberal Jewish community, but not liberals. I have heard some Jewish liberals with liberal domestic policy views but more conservative foreign policy opinions call themselves "Scoop Jackson Democrats"--but that's hardly calling oneself independent. Who does Rush talk to in Palm Beach that fed him this silliness?

Perhaps Rush realizes he doesn't know what he's talking about, because he then tries a different tack to make the Jews have "buyer's remorse" about Obama point -- while also starting a pitch (which he doesn't fully complete until afterwards) to read Norman Podhoretz's book "Why are Jews Liberals?"

If you have often wondered just out of, you know, a legitimately curious political sense -- if you have asked yourself why are so many Jewish people, liberal, what when it seemed so much of what liberals do would be anathema to Jewish people, particularly abortion, but any number of things -- taxes, tax increase. Look it -- you know something, folks?

There are a lot of people, when you say banker, people think Jewish. People who have prejudice, people who have, you know -- what's the best way to say -- a little prejudice about them. To some people, bankers -- code word for Jewish -- and guess who Obama's assaulting? He's assaulting bankers. He's assaulting money people. And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there's starting to be some buyer's remorse there.

OK, I'm going to skip over opening the abortion can of worms (trying to keep this relatively short) and just go to the tax reference. Rush here in the first paragraph, in saying that he thinks Jews would oppose tax increases,is making that basic argument I referred to earlier: Jews on average have a high income, and those with higher incomes tend to oppose tax increases, so one would think that Jews would oppose those who support higher taxes (generally liberals)--but they don't. Fine, it's a point that's been made before and nothing is particularly controversial about it as an academic matter.

But then he gets into trouble. He says people who are bigoted often associate banking with Jews. True. He then says this: "To some people, bankers -- code word for Jewish -- and guess who Obama's assaulting? He's assaulting bankers. He's assaulting money people."

So what is Rush saying here? He appears to be charging Obama with playing to anti-Semites by attacking bankers, or, less charitably, just charging Obama with anti-Semitism for going after banks. This is ridiculous. Banks were a big reason for the recession, and people are legitimately mad because the banks are now making lots of money again. One can disagree with the policy of urging a tax on banks, but I haven't seen any evidence of this being promoted with any kind of targeting of Jews. If the president were going around talking about the bank tax while reciting the name Goldman Sachs and a list of names of other Jewish sounding bankers, then there would be a reason to worry. But that's not what's happening.

Then Rush went even further to try to find support for his Jews have "buyer's remorse" argument by restating the line he just attributed to those with prejudice as fact: "And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there's starting to be some buyer's remorse there."

Factually, I suppose Rush is correct that there are a lot of Jews employed on Wall Street. But what exactly does that have to do with how Jews feel about Obama? Nothing--except Rush seems to think it's a key factor.

What he has done is kind of remarkable. He's essentially said, "People who think Jews control the banks are prejudiced, but, remember, there do happen to be a lot of Jews who work at banks--and they're probably mad at Obama because they're concerned about money and he'd be cutting into their profits." So he's just proceeded to renounce an anti-Semitic stereotype, and then three seconds later turn around and essentially testify to its truth.

Rush has said his remarks were taken out of context. That's not true. Did he misspeak? Perhaps. What he did do is casually reiterate the stereotype that Jews are bankers only concerned about money--in the service of making a political argument. That's not cool, and something that's worthy of some criticism.

Norman Podhoretz, in his defense of Rush, makes the point that anti-Semitism is a much more serious problem on the left these days than the right. It's a point worthy of argument, but I don't necessarily disagree with him. In my 13 years in Jewish journalism, the most scared I've ever been as a Jew was at the anti-globalization rally outside the AIPAC conference a few years back. As the crowd started to chant "Shut it down" in reference to AIPAC, I, in the mood to be a smartass, asked loudly and somewhat rhetorically to the crowd around me, "Why 'Shut it down?' What did they do?" One woman started yelling at me, "You're probably one of them!" and I started to get some nasty looks. As it turned out, nothing happened, although I was pretty creeped out by the whole thing.. But just because there's anti-Semitism on the left, though, doesn't mean that everyone on the right gets a pass if they say something inappropriate. Rush Limbaugh may be a supporter of Jews and Israel, but he could use a little bit of education in this instance.

Jewish Fact Check #3: Jennifer Rubin, J Street and the Univ. of Penn. Hillel

2010-01-19T10:58:00.007-05:00

Jennifer Rubin at Commentary only wrote three sentences this morning about J Street, and yet she got enough wrong that it's worthy of a fact check. Here's the item, the first in her daily "Flotsam and Jetsam" post on the Contentions blog:

University of Pennsylvania’s Hillel is hosting J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami. Does Hillel not know that J Street doesn’t like to be known as a “pro-Israel” organization? One wonders what those who support Hillel must be thinking.

Rubin links to this page at the J Street Web site, which has information on the launch of "J Street Philadelphia," part of a national rollout of local J Street chapters planned for next month, and says that Penn's Hillel is "hosting" J Street and its executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami. The event is being held at Steinhardt Hall at the University of Pennsylvania campus, which, via a Google search, I discovered is the UPenn Hillel building. But the J Street announcement doesn't mention Hillel at all, just the building, and it's not like it's uncommon for Hillels (or any building for that matter) to rent space to an organization without actually endorsing it. (When I was a student at Duke University--and there wasn't a Duke Jewish center built yet--my fraternity used to rent the UNC Hillel House for our January semi-formal every year. I don't think anyone would have said UNC Hillel was "hosting" us or sponsoring us--we were just renting the space. And yes, I know this isn't a perfect analogy since the formal was closed to the public and the J Street event isn't, but I thought it sort of made my point anyway.)

But all the evidence above is speculative, so I sent an email to a J Street spokesperson, who responded that yes, the organization is renting the space from Hillel. Why didn't Rubin make that call or send that email to J Street? Don't know--could be laziness, or that she just wanted to stir up trouble among critics of J Street and knew that actually getting the correct information might stop her from doing that.

Rubin also isn't quite accurate on something else she writes in those brief three sentences. She says that J Street "doesn't like to be known as a 'pro-Israel' organization." But that's just not the case. Although some question whether they should be using the slogan, J Street clearly has always called itself a "pro-Israel, pro-peace" organization. Rubin is conflating J Street with its campus arm, J Street U. The Jerusalem Post reported back in October that J Street U has decided that individual chapters did not have to use "pro-Israel" in its slogan, J Street U denied it, and there was a lot of confusion and back and forth over the issue--and I'm still not really sure what the deal is. Suffice it to say that J Street U's Web site does not use the term "pro-Israel" to describe itself in its mission statement and decries polarizing voices using the terms "pro-Israel" and "pro-Palestinian"--but also states clearly that "as supporters of Israel, we are firmly committed to protecting the future of the State of Israel as a Jewish democratic homeland."

As for those of you reading this and asking, "What would be wrong if UPenn Hillel was hosting a speech from Jeremy Ben-Ami?" that's a legitimate question that is worthy of debate, but has nothing to do with fact-checking--and thus I'm not going to get into it. But you're welcome to hash that out in the comments.

Idol's back -- for the last season as we know it

2010-01-13T00:33:00.004-05:00

As usual, I'm not going to do a recap of the audition episodes of Idol, because half of these people we'll probably never see again--and it's hard to tell how hard anyone is after twenty seconds of a capella singing.

I do want to say one thing, though: This show is likely dead next year when Simon is gone. To be honest, while I missed Paula, it didn't really have that much of an effect on tonight's show. But Simon was the whole show tonight. Every auditioner wants to see him. Every auditioner wants his approval. And it's not just in the auditions. When we get to the final round, when is the audience most excited? When Simon likes someone. Why did people start watching Idol in the first place? Because there was a judge who was willing to actually say people were bad when they were bad.

I have no idea whether the X-Factor will be successful. And I have no idea who will replace Simon on Idol. But I can't imagine Idol will continue to be successful without him.

Jewish Fact Check #2: Stephen Walt's Smears

2010-01-08T11:04:00.008-05:00

It's time for another "Jewish fact check," although my choice of targets, Steve Walt's blog post yesterday at Foreign Policy, is probably too easy because there's just so much wrong with it.

My former colleague at JTA, Ron Kampeas, has already done a masterful job explaining why Walt's argument doesn't make much sense, and is, as he put it, "simultaneously meaningless and contradictory." So I'll just break down how a few of the inaccuracies, distortions and false insinuations Walt throws out in service of that argument.

First of all, Walt states that the workshop he's talking about, teaching Jewish community members how to advocate on the issue of Iran, is sponsored by The Israel Project. It's true that The Israel Project is a sponsor of this Jan. 17 event, but in fact, they're just one of close to two dozen sponsors -- and not even the chief organizer of the event. That would be the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington.

I suppose I could give Walt a little bit of a break on getting this wrong, since the email he received (which I received also) has a big Israel Project banner across it with a link to the group's Web site, obviously leading one initially to believe this was an Israel Project-led event. Except at the bottom of the e-mail there's a prominent link to the JCRC's Web site where it says more information can be found. And clicking that link clarly brings one to the JCRC Web site, which denotes that the program is the "JCRC's community-wide grass-roots advocacy training program" and lists the co-sponsors at the bottom of the page:

Anti-Defamation League DC Chapter, American Jewish Committee, Baltimore Zionist District, Birthright Israel NEXT DC, DC Council BBYO, DC JCC, Hadassah Greater Washington Area Chapter, JCCGW, JCRC of Greater Washington, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Jewish National Fund, National Jewish Democratic Council, Orthodox Union, Republican Jewish Coalition, StandWithUs, The Embassy of Israel, The Israel Project, The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, and The Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy

So how does Walt get this wrong? Is he just lazy and didn't click on the link? That seems the most likely explanation, although I can't imagine how one could write a blog post slamming an event and not even do the minimal amount of research -- such as clicking on a link -- before writing. After all, Walt fancies himself an "expert" on the "Israel lobby." He wrote a whole book about it with his buddy John Mearsheimer. You'd think such a an expert on the Jewish community would know the difference between a local JCRC and The Israel Project, wouldn't you?

There's also the possibility that Walt used The Israel Project because he wants to tar this event as supported only by certain individual organizations in the Jewish community and suggest that many other Jews don't back a strong stance against the possibility of Iranian nuclear weapons. But in fact, the JCRC is an organization which represents the public policy views of more than 200 D.C.-area Jewish organizations. Combine that with the federation, groups representing Democrats and Republicans and a bunch of other well-known organizations and it's clear the "Stop Iran" movement is pretty broad-based in the Jewish community. (That doesn't mean there aren't Jews around the country who oppose sanctions on Iran, just that they're well outnumbered among Jews active in the Jewish communal world.)

But what really bothered me about Walt's piece was this paragraph:

But notice that this event advertises an AIPAC representative, an Israeli diplomat and apparently several unnamed congressional legislative assistants. The latter are supposed to be public servants; we understand that they will be the objects of a lobbying groups efforts but here they seem to be actively helping one. Given the prominent role given to an official representative of a foreign government and the participation of several congressional aides, this event does seem to blur the line between being a purely domestic lobbying group and being something else. Isn't it a bit over-the-line to have an officially accredited diplomat give the plenary address to a workshop whose declared purpose is to teach Americans how to advocate on behalf of that same diplomat's country?

I once wrote that listening to Walt and Mearsheimer talk about the "Israel Lobby" reminded me of the classic Seinfeld episode where everyone thinks Jerry and George are gay, and they keep having to tell everyone, "We're not gay, not that there's anything wrong with that." Actually, that wasn't really right--in fact, it would be as if Jerry and George had added after "not that there's anything wrong with that" something like "but, just to be clear, we think being gay is really bad and that gays are destroying the country."

Walt says there's nothing wrong with the meeting he's writing about,and then makes ridiculous insinuations about how sinister and improper everything scheduled to happen at the meeting is.

Take his comment that it's somehow "over the line" to have an Israeli diplomat give the plenary address "to a workshop whose declared purpose is to teach Americans how to advocate on behalf of that same diplomat's country?"

What Walt is saying here is what's "over the line." He's apparently arguing that when he and Mearsheimer advocate in their book that the United States should have a less close relationship with Israel and that the U.S. should use its leverage to force an Israeli-Palestinian settlement -- a perfectly legitimate position -- that he's advocating in the best interests of the United States. But when other Americans advocate that it's in the best interests of the United States that Iran not have nuclear weapons, that's advocating not for the best interests of the United States but only on behalf of a foreign country? (Walt apparently forgot about all those Arab countries that are scared to death about Iran getting nukes, just to begin...)

Even more ridiculous is Walt's bizarre conspiracy-minded musings about the participation of unnamed "congressional legislative assistants" in the Jan. 17 conference -- he states that they are "supposed to be public servants; we understand that they will be the objects of a lobbying groups efforts but here they seem to be actively helping one."

This is baffling -- he's accusing congressional aides of engaging in .... politics! Imagine that! Having the staff of members of Congress speak to a group which supports their position on the Iran issue is no different than what happens every day in Washington -- members of Congress speaking to groups which agree with them on a particular issue and encouraging them to speak out and work to make their positions the position of the government. (Considering Walt has a Ph.D in political science and teaches at the Kennedy School of Government, it's pretty odd he doesn't know this.)

Let's take J Street, a group Walt likes -- although they don't like him much. They had a conference in October which culminated in the group lobbying on Capitol Hill. And guess what? They had five members of Congress speak at a conference plenary session, telling them how much they appreciated their efforts and telling them how important their work was. Wow, pretty controversial.

Oh, and then there was that rally for universal health care I went to last summer. You're not going to believe this, Professor Walt, but actual "public servants," otherwise known as staffers at the White House, were there and spoke to the crowd. They told them how important their help was to get health reform passed. "Over the line"? Um, no, just how things work in Washington.

So what's the difference between this and congressional staffers speaking to like-minded Americans about how best they can influence the debate on Iran? Pretty much nothing. I thought members of Congress were supposed to try to do all they can to convince their colleagues to vote their way. One of those things is educating voters on how best to get their message across to their own congresspeople. I thought this was how politics works. Why does Steven Walt only think it is nefarious when American Jews do it?

Jewish Fact Check: The alleged opposition to the anti-Semitism czar

2009-12-24T12:45:00.004-05:00

Over the last couple years as a journalist covering the Jewish community, I've noticed that there seems to be an increasing number of rumors, untruths and distortions in the Jewish political world that get repeated enough that they're unfortunately treated as fact. So now, as an unemployed Jewish journalist, I figured I'd spend some time trying to refute these misstatements before they spread. Why? Because it makes me mad when people make up their own facts.

Today's edition: This Haaretz article interviewing the new head of the Obama administration's Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Hannah Rosenthal.

For now, let's put aside the headline of the article, Rosenthal's criticism of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren for his criticism of J Street, and check out this paragraph of Barak Ravid's piece:

She said criticism of her appointment in the Obama administration, from the leaders of some American Jewish organizations, was "from a very few people who blog a lot."

The problem with this paragraph is that no leaders of American Jewish organizations ever criticized Rosenthal's appointment. The only people to criticize the pick of Rosenthal were, as she correctly states, "a very few people who blog a lot." The American Thinker's Ed Lasky,The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb, and WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein all did criticize Rosenthal's appointment, and they all blog a lot--but they don't lead American Jewish organizations.

Why the mix-up? Perhaps the writer was thinking about something the writers mentioned above had written about--that the ADL's Abe Foxman had criticized Rosenthal in a piece in The Jewish Week. But that criticism came more than 18 months ago and was in response to a piece that Rosenthal wrote criticizing some in the pro-Israel community. But Foxman and the ADL didn't criticize Rosenthal's appointment--in fact, he praised it, and said he looked forward to working with Rosenthal.

Unfortunately, this is the second time a well-read website has reported erroneously that Rosenthal's appointment was opposed by American Jewish organizations. The first was earlier this month in Foriegn Policy, when Stephen Walt got it wrong (what else is new) in his blog, stating "the Zionist Organization of America and other rightwing Jewish groups are complaining about the appointment of Hannah Rosenthal to direct the Office to Combat and Monitor Anti-Semitism." That was wrong and a complete misreading of the article he links to, Natasha Mozgovaya's Haaretz piece -- which notes ZOA and other organizations' criticism of the appointments of Chuck Hagel and Chas Freeman, but specifically says that "conservative web sites" are the ones upset over Rosenthal.

So, let's stop repeating this false statement. Hannah Rosenthal's appointment to head the Obama administration's office to monitor anti-Semitism was not criticized by any major Jewish organization. Now should Rosenthal, in her new position, be giving interviews in which she's criticizing the Israeli ambassador for his position on J Street? That's a very interesting and worthy question for debate--but for now, I'll just stick to the fact checking.

Another surprise

2009-05-21T07:01:00.002-04:00

For the second year in a row, an upset on American Idol. As I wrote after Tuesday night's show, I thought Adam should have won, but liked Kris a lot too and wouldn't have a problem if he won. So it was a nice moment when Kris actually said, "Adam deserves this." Both guys were very gracious and it seems they both might have nice careers ahead of them--with all the attention Adam has received, this loss shouldn't hurt him at all.

I don't have much else to say--I've been a slacker all season in blogging Idol, so why should the finale be any different? But a few thoughts on the finale.

Best duet: Kris and Keith Urban
Not-the-best duet: Lil Rounds and Queen Latifah

Least welcome return: Norman Gentle--talk about a one-trick pony, he did the same bit for the fourth time
Most amusing award bit: Bikini Girl return and her, um, new body, and then Kara's attempt to outsing her. I guess Kara can't judge well and can't write a good coronation song, so at least she showed she could do a decent job on a Mariah Carey song--which is actually kind of sad, if you think about it. But her opening her dress did make me laugh.

Worst performance of the night: Rod Stewart. Wow, was he bad. He sounded 100 years old. He's really touring this summer? I'm sure there were people calling Ticketmaster and requesting refunds after last night.

And that's it. We've come to the end of another Idol season, and we'll see next January whether I'm up for blogging season nine. Thanks for reading.

Fingerhut out.

Not a bad finish

2009-05-19T22:31:00.003-04:00

The American Idol finale inevitably seems to disappoint because of the format. Ever since the incredibly entertaining finale in season two, where Clay and Ruben each did a coronation song and then selected two songs they hadn't performed before, they've had each singer duplicate at least one song from the season--and then saddle each singer with a horrible coronation song. For whatever reason, last year's finale was a little better than usual--the coronation songs weren't as bad. This year, again, the finale wasn't that bad--even though the coronation song was horrendous--because the repeat songs they both did were really good. So let's break it down.

Adam doing Mad World--Simon was correct in that the fog and the coat and the steps made the whole thing a bit much, especially since the reason this performance was so good in the first place was because it was so stripped down. But it was still really good.

Kris doing Aint No Sunshine--I remember this being good when Kris first did it, but he actually improved it the second time out--what I love to see in an Idol finale. One of his best performances of the season.

Adam doing Change Is Gonna Come--They should let Simon Fuller pick songs more often for the singers, because this was a great choice for Adam--a classic soul song that allowed him to both belt out parts and be soft and soulful at times. A song that was right in his wheelhouse, and yet it was still challenging. And he did it really well. It came close to going over the top a couple times, but never did.

Kris doing What's Going On?--Once again, Simon Fuller does a good job. It's a classic song that fits Kris, and yet doesn't fit him so well that it isn't challenging at the same time. I actually sort of agreed and disagreed with what Simon had to say: Stripping it down to just an acoustic guitar and some guys playing drums did feel sort of small for the moment. Yet I also disagree in that doing the song in this style is what we expect of Kris--it's why we like him in the first place. His most memorable performances have been in that style, so why shouldn't use that style in the finale? As for Kara praising Simon Fuller for picking a socially conscious song for Kris--Kara, idiocy like that isn't going to get you brought back next year. (By the way, the head of Fox Entertainment refused Monday to say there would be four judges next year.) Remember Kara? It's about artistry.

Adam and Kris doing that horrible song--Really, I can't believe it, but this might be the worst coronation song they've ever made us suffer through. A tuneless mess with barely a hook to be found. I think I might have enjoyed Kris' version a little bit more because you could actually make out the weak melody somewhat better, but his voice was sort of all over the place in parts. I hope we don't have to hear the winner sing this monstrosity tomorrow night in the extended show--and is it really that hard to fit everything into two hours? What can't they cut from what is likely to be a bloated show? The 18 different movies they'll have to promote? The 15-minute montage of "How we got here?" They can't control themselves enough to just do two hours and get on with it--they have to threaten us with overruns?

Oh, and if Kara isn't eliminated from Idol because of her annoying appearances at the judging table, she should be thrown off the show for being involved in writing a song that bad.

So who should win? I really have liked Kris improve and develop over the course of the show, and he might be the more viable artist commercially because his style is more current, in some ways, than Adam's. But the fact that he might be more viably commercial shouldn't enter into it--American Idol is kind of like the Heisman Trophy. Every year, people complain that so-and-so shouldn't win the Heisman Trophy because he's not a good pro prospect or won't do well in the NFL. But that shouldn't matter--the Heisman Trophy should be awarded to the best college football player each year, not the best pro prospect. And American Idol shouldn't be awarded to the guy who might sell the most records, it should be awarded to the person who has earned it through their performances on the show. And consistently, Adam has been the most interesting, best performer throughout the season. That's why I think he should win, and will win. Would I be upset if Kris won? No, because he's pretty good. Adam was just better.

Fingerhut out.

We're almost done with this season

2009-05-12T23:03:00.003-04:00

One of the most memorable images of tonight's penultimate performance show of American Idol was when they showed former executive producer Nigel Lythgoe sitting in the audience watching the show. I criticized Nigel a lot on this blog over the last few years, but Nigel, all is forgiven. I know I sound like a broken record, but really--only two songs each for the final three for the first time ever because the judges can't shut up enough--and they can't stop commercializing the show enough--to get nine songs into a program. So no "Clive Davis choice" this year--or "producers choice" like it was last year, which at least prevents the sabotage we saw last year when Syesha Mercado got saddled with that song from the movie "Happy Feet", so there's at least one positive out of all of this. (Sorry for that run-on sentence.)

Anyway, I thought there was one memorable performance tonight and nothing particularly special in the other five performances.

Danny's first song--Why did Paula pick an obscure Terence Trent D'Arby song for Danny instead of, as Simon correctly said, a good song by Terence Trent D'Arby like "Sign Your Name" or Wishing Well"? Who knows? (And by the way, this show is giving me way too many flashbacks. Last week's results show had performances from Slash, the guitarist from the biggest rock band in the world during my college years, and Paula Abdul, the biggest female artist around during my college years. I can remember "Straight Up" being a big song during my freshman year and that song where she danced around with the cat in the video when I was at the beach after senior year. Or maybe it was the "Will You Marry Me?" song I'm thinking of. Anyway, Terence Trent D'Arby brought me back even farther--I remember dancing to "Wishing Well" at my senior prom. But moving on...)

Anyway, I didn't think this was all that great. Danny just seemed to shout the song to me--there was nothing about this performance that about 50 Idol contestants over the years couldn't have done.

Danny's second song--This was better, but a song like "You Are So Beautiful"--while a clever choice by Danny--is almost too easy. Since the song doesn't really go anywhere, Danny could pretty much do whatever he wanted to with the song--which I know Kara likes because switching up the melody turns her on to no end. But "stunning"? "Vocal master class"? Really? Nice performance, but I'm not downloading it from ITunes or anything.

Kris' first song--This was solid but nothing special. I was glad that Simon called Kara out because he's right--it is kind of ridiculous to give someone a song to sing and then get disappointed because they don't totally change the song. Of course, it's what Kara has wanted everyone to do all year, so it wasn't actually surprising--and I'm not sure why Simon waited until tonight to broach that subject--but at least it came up. As for Kara's bitchy "what do you know about interpreting a song," I'm not even going to go there.

Kris' second song--I loved this. This is what I like to see someone do on Idol--not change the melody of a song, but reinterpret the song in a different style or give it a different feel while staying true to what you like about the song. To take a hip-hop song and make it an acoustic-guitar based song was cool and enjoyable. This I could imagine downloading on ITunes.

Adam's first song--I still think Adam is the most talented and deserves to win the competition, but I love the song "One" and I didn't love this. It was fine for what it was, I just didn't really like the total change-up to a classic song. I didn't think it improved the song, it just gave Adam a chance to do his patented scream.

Adam's second song--A solid performance, but nothing particularly special.

So who's going home? I hope it's Danny, but I unfortunately think it will be Chris.

Finally, don't bore yourself watching a full hour of the results show tomorrow night. I recommend you DVR it and watch the Penguins-Capitals hockey game. You won't be disappointed.

LET'S GO CAPS!

This show is not as enjoyable as it used to be

2009-05-05T22:54:00.002-04:00

For those of you coming here to read a detailed breakdown on last night's Idol episode, I'm sorry to disappoint you once again. I'm not feeling well and just want to go to bed. But unlike last week -- when between attending the Caps game on Tuesday night and work commitments the following night (combined with a general lack of excitment about Idol these days) meant I didn't even watch Idol until Thursday night, I'll at least provide a couple thoughts.

Adam, of course, was probably the best because he's just the most comfortable person left in the competition with straight rock songs, but I'm still not sure how I feel about Zeppelin songs on American Idol. Just kind of weird. (And I can't believe he didn't do "Sweet Child o Mine" with Slash as the mentor. He would have killed.) Still, I thought Adam wasn't really that much better than Allison, who I thought was pretty strong. i actually liked Danny tonight, until that awful last note, although Kara, um, Dream On is "early" Aerosmith, the songs you mentioned like Cryin are "late" Aerosmith. Wow, Kara, you're turning into a gaffe machine, the George W. Bush of American Idol judges. As for Kris, "Come Together" has always been one of my least favorite Beatles songs because I always found it kind of boring--so I wasn't crazy about Kris' performance, but I don't think it deserved the beating it got from the judges.

As for the duets, I enjoyed both of them, but found the whole thing ridiculous. To beat a dead horse on this blog, is this show so out of control that they now, unlike every other year, can't have the top four do two solo songs apiece? I presume next week we won't get to hear the top 3 do three songs, as is customary, because they won't be able to fit it in with all the other junk they have to fit into the show and the fourth judge. I'm really starting to not enjoy this show anymore--one reason being that in its eight season, it's getting kind of boring, but the other is the show's increasingly smaller time left over for actual singing.

Fingerhut out.

No Idol post tonight...

2009-04-29T01:01:00.001-04:00

because I was at the Caps game, and it was spectacular.

Nothing has changed

2009-04-22T01:38:00.005-04:00

Passover is over, and thus after getting home late tonight, I don't have the time to do a full blogging rundown of tonight's Idol. But my quick summary would be that absolutely nothing surprising happened tonight that changes the competition in any way. Adam was the best, Lil brought up the rear and everyone else pretty much fit tonight where they basically are in the general scheme of things--Kris and Allison near the top, Danny getting great judges' reviews even though I didn't think he was that great, Matt making me wish he hasn't gotten saved last week, etc. I guess Anoop was kind of disappointing, considering he'd been getting better the last few weeks. Tonight, I thought he was bland and off-tune.

A few more quick notes:

Back in season four, they changed the theme name from "Disco Night" to "70s Dance Night" because they didn't want to lose Bo Bice--who had a rough week the night before and was likely to not be comfortable doing a disco song. It allowed him to do "Vehicle," he survived and he ended up going to the finals. That seems so long ago--now, contestants just take a disco song and revamp it as an acoustic guitar-based, Santana-like song (like Kris), or a ballad (like Adam) or a jazzy mess (like Matt). When the show started tonight, this annoyed me--after all, disco isn't about a certain type of song, it's about a certain beat. By the end of the show, I was just resigned to the fact that American Idol has changed and this is the way it is now--and I liked both Kris and Adam's performance, so it wasn't that bad. It still feels not quite right, though.

Also, I said this last week, but it was even more of an issue tonight--When will the judges stop lying to Lil? This week, Kara again went with the "you didn't show us the kind of artist you are" crap. Please, Kara, stop with that and just tell her she sang the song poorly. Simon managed to say it, why does everyone else keep telling her this nonsense?

Amazing what getting rid of the taped pieces did for the time issue, huh? They were pretty much right on schedule tonight. By the way, there was an article this week in which one of the AI producers said they were happy with four judges and weren't thinking of going back to three judges. Gosh, I hope this was just "well, what else can we say during the season" kind of stuff, because I don't think America will be able to take another year of this.

Now, I'm going to go to bed while trying to get those frightening vocal runs from Matt Giraud's "Staying Alive" out of my head. I think he and Lil and Anoop will be the bottom three, and Matt and Lil will go home--although if someone like Allison or Kris or Danny ends up going home and they can't use the judges' save, I'll laugh and enjoy what the judges' stupidity last week will have wrought. Yeah, we all find enjoyment in strange places.

Fingerhut out.

Making history?

2009-04-16T04:30:00.002-04:00

While Lil should have gone home, Matt wasn't very good last night and it was pretty much about the right time for him to go home. Simon was absolutely right--he has no chance to win the competition. So why was the judges save used tonight? Maybe Simon didn't want to have to listen to Kara and Paula any more? Who knows. (And geez, I know Paula has always danced to the singing of the Idols, but she's so wacky it seemed sort of genuine. Kara's exaggerated posing and singing-along is just annoying and a cry for attention.)

I can't wait for someone that might have deserved the save, or someone that the producers would much rather have in the competition (like a Danny Gokey or something), to end up in the bottom two next week and he'll be forced to go home because they wasted it on Matt Giraud. Oh well, it might make things more interesting next week.

What a mess

2009-04-14T22:53:00.003-04:00

When American Idol first began, I marveled every week what an enjoyable, entertaining show it was. Now, I tune in every week and I marvel at what a mess the show has become. I once wrote in this blog that the producers of American Idol don't seem to know why this show is successful, but American Idol was such a simple yet great concept for a show that even they can't screw it up. But maybe they can. Tonight's decision to only have two judges give remarks on each contestant was really a disgrace. That's the only way they could figure out fitting the show into an hour? Really? They couldn't have cut some of the Ryan introducing the judges crap, and the Tarantino intro, and the other junk that led to no one singing until seven minutes into the show and only one person singing in the first 16 minutes of the show? They couldn't have cut those Coca-Cola sponsored interviews? We really had to hear about Danny Gokey buying a guitar? They couldn't have sold a couple less commercials? They couldn't have just forced the judges to say less? And they didn't think of this before adding a fourth judge?

Look, I'm not bothered (and I can't imagine anyone else will be bothered) to not hear Randy or Kara critique Allison or Adam or Danny. But I am bothered to not hear Simon critique Anoop or Matt or Kris. As much as Simon seems sort of bored and mailing it in this year, he's still the only judge who really matters. He's the voice that's closest to the people. If he likes someone, they get votes. If he pans someone, they lose votes. His bluntness and honesty was the reason people started watching this show in the first place. Hearing his opinions is one of the reasons we tune in every week. It's stunning that the producers don't seem to be aware of this.

Last year, Paula got a lot of attention for giving her critique of Jason Castro's second song before Jason actually performed his second song. It was weird, but odd things always happen with Paula. To me, the big scandal that night was that the judges had been told to hold their critiques until the second performance. What amused me was that the only reason they ended up giving rushed critiques at the end of everyone's first performance was because the head of reality programs at Fox was watching at home and called in to the producer to tell them to get the judges to give some critiques before the second performance. So the network head watching the show was home going, "What are they doing?" Well, at least someone at Fox knows what's going on.

The most amazing thing: They still went four minutes past 9:00 tonight. Unbelievable.

Enough ranting. Quickly, though, let me weigh in on last week's departure of Scott. He handled his elimination with grace and good humor; it's just unfortunate that the judges had to patronize him to the very end by pretending they might save him. Depressing.

After last week's good theme, we get a poor theme--movie songs. It's terrible because it has nothing to do with music--it's just a random, artificial distinction whether a song happened to be in a film or not and has nothing to do with the song.
As for Tarantino, he is someone who is both a fan of Idol and a big fan of music and how it fits into movies--I read somewhere that he said he wouldn't have made the movie Pulp Fiction if he hadn't been able to get the right to use "Son of a Preacher Man." On the other hand, the contestants weren't singing in movies or singing over video--they were performing on a stage. I guess he was OK though--he approached it from a performance aspect instead of totally a vocal aspect, so it did give us something a little different.

Let's get to the singers.

Allison--I thought this was fine, but nothing special. She came on well at the end, but I've heard this song sung a lot by various people, and it didn't strike me as anything particularly memorable. Simon seems to come around on her, though. By the way, I think Allison needs to stop closing her eyes and turning to the side when singing the big notes--she looks like she's trying too hard instead of just performing.

Anoop--Anoop is getting better--I really enjoyed this. He gave it just enough of his own spin to "make it his own" without changing it up too much, and vocally it was just really nice. This is an example of what I meant early in the season when I complained about Kara requiring that someone's single song choice in the semifinal round define them as an artist for the rest of the competition. Anoop has a good voice, but needed a few weeks to figure out what he's good at and what he shouldn't do--and that's always been part of the fun of American Idol, seeing contestants develop and get better and not be a "package artist" from the very beginning. Did Kara watch this show before she started judging it? Maybe, but she obviously didn't get it.

Adam--Obviously not as good as last week--but that was a very high bar to clear--but I liked it. It was interesting and his voice sounded good and he wasn't screechy, as he'd been on some earlier up tempo songs. He really sounds like Axl Rose when he starts wailing, so in case you're reading, Adam, I'd love to see you do "Sweet Child O'Mine" before the end of the season.

Matt Giraud--Chris Daughtry was able to do something good with it a few years ago, but I've never been a real fan of this song---I always found it a little boring. And Matt didn't really change that. The first part was kind of boring, and when he changed up the melody in the second half, it was a little more exciting but the vocals weren't exactly memorable. Matt seems very limited and not particularly versatile to me--if he sings a piano-based soul song, he's fine, but if he does anything else it's not that great. Might be his time to go next week.

Danny Gokey--Danny has a nice voice, seems like a nice guy, but is he really anything more than that? This was fine, but I've already pretty much forgotten it a couple hours after I watched it. Just seems like other singers on the show are a lot more interesting performers and singers than Danny is. I will defend Danny on one thing, though. Simon noted that Danny didn't do anything new with the song like David Cook did with the Lionel Ritchie song "Hello" last year. What's funny about that is that Chris Sligh totally revamped this song two years ago, making it into a Coldplay song and I believe Simon and others told him that with such a classic song, he should have just sung the melody. Granted, Chris's version was terrible, and that one could conceivably change up the song without ruining it as badly, but it's still sort of ironic.

Kris Allen--Great song choice, great song, and he sung it well, with emotion. Unfortunately, we didn't get to hear what Simon thought about it--did he love it as much as Kara? If he did, that would have really helped Kris. But I guess we'll never know. (And to be fair, if he didn't like it, it might have hurt Kris, but that's the way the show works.) Oh, and Kara--can you really call a song that won an Academy Award an "obscure" song?

Lil Rounds--This was just not good. I have no idea how she got the pimp spot. The first half of the song was off-key and the second half, when she gave it the gospel tinge, was a little better but still kind of flat. You know you're bad when Paula doesn't even mention your performance but talks about what great lyrics the song has. As for the Simon-Lil confrontation, I feel bad for Lil because she's doing what the judges say they want--but the judges haven't been honest with her all through the competition. They keep telling her she's picking the wrong songs, she's not being enough of an artist, blah, blah, and if she picks the right song she'll be fine. But that's not Lil's problem. Lil's problem is that whatever song she picks, she doesn't sing it very well. She's not that good a singer. She probably shouldn't have been so pimped by the show and the judges in the first place. Randy has often said, at his most lucid, that whatever song you pick, sing it well. Lil only did that once, and that was her problem--not the fact that she never picked a Keyshia Cole or Mary J. Blige song. It's a shame the judges never got around to saying that with their ridiculous focus on artistry this year. At least Simon sort of came close to saying it tonight, but not as blunt as it should have been, when he said "You're not the artist I thought you were."

Bottom three: Matt, Lil, Danny, with Lil going home. And the judges hopefully won't even waste time pretending to use the save.

Fingerhut out.

It's Lambert's to lose

2009-04-07T23:04:00.004-04:00

For the first time in a few weeks, I'm back in full blogging mode tonight--I get out of work early tomorrow for Passover, so I can come home and take a nap if I'm tired. So let's break tonight's show down, which was a fairly entertaining one for this season, singer by singer.

But first, a word about the theme. I like the birth year theme, because it gives the singers enough songs that they should be able to find something good to choose from, but does limit them enough so that they can't pick just anything. (Of course, some people still cheat, which we'll get to momentarily.)The birth year theme also gave us one of my favorite Idol performances of all time, Constantine's "Bohemian Rhapsody," which in some ways changed the way Idol contestants envisioned what they could do, not always in a good way (like that Michael Johns doing "Day in the Life" montrosity last year.) Tonight, the one problem with the theme was that there were so many singers born in the mid-1980s that the flashbacks I was getting to junior high school were giving me the shakes. Even so, it was nice to see some fresh songs that I don't think have been done on Idol before. Some weren't particularly good choices for the singers, but we'll get to that.

Also, the producers of this show--and the judges for that matter--should be embarrassed at how long the show ran over tonight (my DVR was set to go seven minutes past nine and it still cut off during the recap) and how Adam didn't even get a full critique (and Matt got three words from everyone). How did they get that far behind and not appear to know it until 8:55? They only had eight singers tonight. They've done 10 singers in an hour before and they can't fit it eight now?
I know it has a lot to do with having four judges, which everyone knows by now is a mistake. But why can't the judges in the early part of the show learn to speak concisely--both Paula and Kara just go on and on and on, and tonight often said similar things, although Kara is much more annoying at it. At least they skipped that ridiculous intro where the judges walked out tonight. They got through seven years with Ryan introducing the judges--we really didn't need that weirdness this year to add to all the other horrors we've had to sit through. On to the singers.

Danny Gokey--Anyone who's ever read this blog knows what I'm going to say about the song selection here. Mickey Gilley's "Stand by Me"? I know this has happened before, but isn't this kind of cheating? I have no idea if Mickey Gilley's cover of "Stand By Me" was popular or not (I listened to it on Youtube, and it's basically a country version of the song, not the weird jazzy thing that Danny did), but this isn't a song from 1980, it's a song from the early 60s. Here's a question: The movie "Stand by Me" came out in 1986, and the song (the Ben E. King version, of course) became a radio hit that summer again, if I recall correctly. Could someone born in 1986 sing that song for the birth year theme? Anyway, Danny's peformance was actually pretty good, even with the strange arrangement of the song. He's got a nice, gravelly tone to his voice, but he still doesn't strike me as that special or remarkable. Others seem to disagree, though.

Kris Allen -- First of all, Kris, that whole surrounded by fans thing didn't work for Matt last week. I have no idea why you decided to do that, but don't do it again--it just makes you look lame and we couldn't even see you that well. Then the choice of song--why would you pick a song that pretty much stays with the same limited notes/melody the whole way through? Adding a little jazziness didn't really change that. Simon was right, it was boring--and seemed like you've been reading your good reviews.

Lil--Actually, unlike the judges, I thought this was a pretty good song choice for Lil, until she started to sing it and I thought, before the judges said it, that this does sound kind of karaoke. Of course, the problem with this kind of critique of Lil--the karaoke critique--is that, as Randy unwittingly pointed out during his judges critique, they keep telling Lil to be somebody else ("Oh, you should sing Mary J. Blige, oh, you should sing Keisha Cole, etc.") So she was just trying to be somebody else by doig a karaoke performance, just not the right person as far as the judges are concerned. Here's the other problem with Lil, as Michael Slezak at EW.com has frequently pointed out in recent weeks--the judges keep talking about how talented Lil is, but we really haven't seen much evidence of it. Whenever they showed her in Hollywood, she was shouting and oversinging, and other than her very good semifinal performance, she hasn't had one really good performance in the finals. What exactly did she do to be talked about as "mad, mad talented" by Randy every week? Sorry, don't see it.

Anoop--OK, I'll grudgingly congratulate Anoop and the rest of the University of North Carolina for their victory last night. They deserved it--they were the best team this year. I just wish that the championship game would have been a litle more interesting--having it basically wrapped up by the first TV timeout was pretty boring. Then again, I was able to get 24 instead of wasting my time waiting for a hopeless Michigan State comeback. Wow, I can't believe UNC has won two titles since the last time Duke was in the Final Four. Oh, Anoop's singing. I thought he was great--gave it his own spin, confident and assured, good song. If he does that a couple more weeks in a row, he has top four potential--which didn't seem likely a few weeks ago.

Scott--Tonight may have been the best example of the judges patronizing Scott because of his blindness. If anyone else had been that bad and botched that many notes, would they have gotten the "Well, bad song choice, and boring performance, but it wasn't that bad" critique that he got. Simon said he picked a bad song--the song was fine, he just didn't sing it well. Please America, haven't we had enough?

Allison--She was really good, because she took a song that's often sung on Idol in a very quiet, safe way, and put some vocal power behind it. I think it was one of her best performances of the season. Having said that, please stop comparing her to Kelly Clarkson, judges. It's not fair to her, and while I see the comparison somewhat vocally, there is a huge gap in personality--as the judges sort of acknowledged. Allison seems to have plenty of personality in the video clips, in interviews with Ryan on stage, etc. But she doesn't have much personality when she's singing--something Kelly Clarkson always had a lot of. It may just be an age thing that she'll develop, though. Oh, and I can't believe there's a contestant on American Idol that was born two weeks before I graduated college.

Matt Giraud--"Part-time Lover"--the song that was forever soiled on the Idol stage by the version that Kevin Covais gave us. Matt was much better than that, but I wasn't loving it as much as the judges. Too much growling and vocal runs and scat singing, and not enough just pure singing for me. But it should get him to next week.

Adam Lambert--When this show started, I was a little skeptical of Adam and all his flamboyance and theatrics. (By the way, loved when his dad said he was never interested in sports.) But I'm firmly on the Adam Lambert bandwagon now. Another really great, mostly restrained performance. The guy can sing, and he's interesting. I know there are a lot of Danny Gokey fans out there, including one of my family members, but come on--Adam is kicking his butt every week. Has Simon ever given a standing ovation to any contestant before?

Bottom three: Scott, Lil and let's say Matt because he seems to be there a lot.
Going home: Let's hope it's Scott.

One other thing: PLEASE LEAVE SOME COMMENTS.

Happy Passover, happy Easter and Fingerhut out.

The only good thing about the Idol results show....

2009-04-01T23:39:00.002-04:00

is that Kara doesn't talk much. Otherwise, it's just a mess. The latest addition --the lip-synching of the group sings for no particular reason (this is a singing contest and they're fake singing!). Oh, well, David Cook was good--although the way they kept showing his mom was very strange.

Megan's gone, and that's good--very attractive, except for that sleeve-like tattoo, but out of her league the last few weeks. Anyway, if you want to read something funny about my least favorite judge, and some apparent tensions between her, Paula and Simon (which was noticeable last week when Paula made a face after Kara gave a rough critique of someone), here's a link to an US Magazine article.

Fingerhut to bed.

Some Idol thoughts

2009-03-31T23:47:00.003-04:00

I came home late and have to get up early, and I'd rather sleep than blog. So once again an very brief comment on tonight's show.

I did enjoy Kara's heckler tonight (the one who yelled "broken record")--apparently the rest of the country is just as tired of her as I am.

The judges have always talked about song choice, but this whole thing of suggesting songs people should have sung is getting ridiculous. When you hear Danny this week talk about how last week's song was his fifth choice, and Scott say he loses "hat picks" for songs, how can you just say, "Oh, Megan, you should have sung that Adele song." Maybe it didn't get cleared, maybe someone else wanted to sing it, whatever.... This show is so frustrating sometimes.

If Kara says something about wanting to hear what your first single is going to be on your album one more time, I might punch a hole in my wall.

Randy said Scott was one of the best of the night four or five times, even though he was just the fifth person to perform. Is that really that much of a compliment?

Scott's performance was probably his best of the competition. But "Just the Way You Are" is a pretty piano-heavy song to begin with. To say, like Paula or Kara or somebody said, that he "stripped it down" is really giving him way too much credit.

Poor Matt Giraud. They keep saying that they want the singers to show what kind of artist they want to be. Matt wants to be a modern rock artist. But the judges keep telling him he's wrong and he should be an R&B artist. Judges, if this show is really about "showing who you are as an artist" -- even though it used to be about singing and performing -- then let him show who he is an an artist?

Matt, if you wanted to do a Fray song, you should have done "How to Save A Life." Better song. And don't ever do that cheesy "I'll stand up at the keyboard and have all these people standing around me." That was just wrong and much worse than your performance.

By the way, never a good idea for people on Idol to do current songs--meaning songs that are still being played regularly on the radio or have been released in the last six months or so. They haven't stood the test of time and are too fresh--it's hard to do anything with them.

Megan has reached that point for me--the female contestant who I like having on the show because she's really attractive but whose singing is poor enough that I feel really guilty about rooting for her to stay. But I didn't vote, so don't worry.

Lil, whatever problem you're having on American Idol, the answer should never be to sing a second-tier Celine Dion song. That was not that good.

I didn't really like the shrieking, but at least Adam Lambert is interesting. Funny, after last year when everyone rearranged every song to fit their personal style (and it got really boring after a while), this year hardly anyone does anything different.

The only other guy to switch things up a little is Kris, and he was good again tonight. If you had said three weeks ago that he would finish in the top three in Idol, I would have said you were crazy, but I think he's got to be one of the favorites right now.

Bottom three: Anoop (not as bad as the judges thought, but he went early in the show and wasn't particularly memorable), Megan (just not good) and Matt Giraud, because he was there last week and I don't know who else to put there. Maybe Lil, but I think she's not in danger yet.

And Megan will be eliminated.

Fingerhut out.

Very quick thoughts

2009-03-26T01:19:00.002-04:00

Was out after work and didn't get home until late, so I don't have time to blog after watching a two-hour Idol for the sixth week in a row or whatever.

Quickly, Adam was great, Kris was too, and Anoop was pretty good as well.

Bottom three: Michael Sarver, Megan Joy (who gets better looking every week but kind of sucked tonight) and Scott. And it appears that the judges have finally figured out that Scott and Michael really aren't that great. Simon, Michael couldn't have won the competition when you urged the country to vote him into the top 12 last month--nothing happened to change that. It was always that way.
Sarver will go home.

And overall, the judges were generally pretty good tonight (and is anyone else sensing that Paula, by some of the faces she made tonight, really doesn't care for Kara), but Kara was totally wrong when she said the competition isn't about singing, but about "artistry" and what you can do to change up the melody. Kara, it is about singing well--since there's a few people left who don't sing that well--and you don't have to change the melody to be unique. Adam didn't really change the melody in any significant way (and he shouldn't have, since Tracks of My Tears is one of the great pop songs of all time), but he stripped it down and reinvented it by staying true to the song.

Fingerhut out.

What was going on with that group sing?

2009-03-18T23:28:00.003-04:00

First of all, what are they doing lip syncing the group sing? Not only could you tell from watching them sing, but the sound mix was way too good to be live. Look, those group sings are usually pretty horrible, but if you're going to pre-record the singing, why are you bothering? It's a live show. It's continually amazing how dumb the producers of this show are.

So one of the early favorites is gone. I thought Alexis didn't deserve the lashing she got from the judges last night, but probably didn't deserve all the praise she got in the semifinals. Still, I'd think I'd put her in the top half of the performers, and certainly better than Michael Sarver. But that's American Idol. I did think the judges might save her, and after not using it tonight I'm going to predict that if they use it, it won't happen until the last week possible--unless Gokey or Lambert somehow end up eliminated.

Oh, and President Obama--do you have to schedule a press conference for Tuesday night? You couldn't have postponed it a day? It messes up the usual rhythm of the week to have the Idol performance show on Wednesday night...Eh, I think I'll probably survive.

Fingerhut out.

How can I get Kara to stop appearing on my TV?

2009-03-17T23:29:00.005-04:00

I'm tired, I'm still underwhelmed by the show, but I figured I'd at least show up to blog tonight just so I could mention that I actually met Randy Travis a couple years ago. I was at the D.C. Jewish community's Israel solidarity rally back in the summer of 2006 during the Lebanon war, and John Hagee, a popular evangelical minister in Texas, was having the annual meeting of his group Christians United for Israel in Washington that week. Randy Travis is a friend of Hagee and a supporter of Israel, so he came with Hagee and came on stage with him when Hagee spoke at the rally. I walked behind the stage after his appearance to ask him why he was there and what he thought about Israel--he said he was a big supporter (I can't find my article on line to give you all a quote) and seemed like he was about to say something really interesting when some woman walked over and told him he had to leave so he could get to the airport. And that's my brush with Randy Travis. Yeah, not very exciting. Anyway, the funniest part was a few minutes later, when the PR person from the federation walked over to me and said "Did you see Travis Tritt?" Oh, and Randy Travis was a really boring mentor.

So I'm really tired of having two-hour shows--I believe this was the fifth in a row, and there's a sixth next Tuesday--and to have a two-hour show on my least favorite night of the year, country night, probably made it seem a little longer. Having said that, I will say that no one was flat-out bad tonight. My sister said last week that my opinion that this is the worst group of finalists is wrong because there aren't any really bad singers--like there have been in past years (although Jasmine wasn't exactly good.) She has a point. But just as there aren't any bad singers, there aren't that many singers that truly stand out either. There were some good performances tonight, but I don't think there was anything that anyone will remember a couple weeks from now. That's more my problem with the season--a sameness to everything. And that is directly attributable to the judges, who don't want to see singers develop and try new things, they want to keep them in the box or lane that they're supposed to be in--and if they try to leave that lane or get out of that box, they'll be slapped down and told never to do it again. We had Alexis Grace tonight saying "I promise to be dirty next week," and Lil Rounds promising she wouldn't deviate from R&B ever again. God forbid they should try to grow as an artist and try new things. Why are the judges forcing them to do this? Why do they have to decide their place in the "industry" now, two weeks into the finals? Kara is the most annoying about it, but all the judges are doing it, and it's killing the show. But I'll stop going on about this for now because I did it last week too, and probably will every week. Brief summaries coming up:

Michael Sarver--Garth Brooks doesn't have the most powerful voice in the world but is a great singer and showman, so he can sell this song--which doesn't even involve much singing but more a lot of fast talking. Michael doesn't have the singing ability or the showmanship, so it wasn't that great. Kara lauded him for remembering a lot of words. You suck, Kara. And why is he talking back to the judges already? Awfully cocky.

Allison Iraheta --She's good, I liked it and so far looks like a 16 year old that can handle the pressure.

Kris Brown--Thought it was nice but kind of boring. The guy has a nice voice, but nothing really unique or interesting about it.

Lil Rounds--Simon, Lil is short for little, but it's also short for Lillian. Do you really think she was actually named Little? As for the song, I want to applaud Lil for actually trying to do a country song in a country song, instead of picking the most non-country song you could find or changing a country song into an R&B song. At least you were trying to stay true to the theme, even if they don't want you to do that any more. And I thought it was better than the judges thought it was--restrained, solid. And Kara, did you really suggest that she should have done "I Will Always Love You"? Hasn't that song been done enough? Although I'll give Kara a little break here, because "Independence Day" has been done far too much by Idol singers too. But Kara, I still can't stand you.

Adam Lambert--The less said about that mess, the better. Amazingly, Kara actually summed it up best by saying, "That was just weird." Don't ruin a great Johnny Cash song like that, Adam. And Kara, just because I agreed with you doesn't mean that I still wouldn't support returning to three judges on Idol as soon as possible.

Scott Macintyre--Everything Scott sings sounds like a mid-1980s soft rock song. I feel like I'm 14 and in the car with my dad while he's listening to W-Lite, the old light rock station when I was growing up in the D.C. area. This isn't necessarily a compliment. I couldn't believe Randy said something about wanted to hear some "hot, crazy" vocals from Scott. When have we ever heard "hot, crazy" vocals from Scott? He plays the piano and is a mediocre singer. But you guys praised him like he was Ray Charles for some reason. And Kara, just because I'm ripping on Randy doesn't mean I've forgotten about you. (OK, this Kara bit is getting kind of old. I'll try to stop.)

Alexis Grace--I thought this was fine, but it wasn't "dirty" enough for Kara and company and they made her promise to get dirty or whatever in the future. Hey Kara, didn't you tell Lil a few singers before that staying "true to yourself" is part of being an artist? (Sorry, I couldn't help myself.)

Danny Gokey--This was very good, one of the better performances of the night. While Danny doesn't have the most powerful voice, his raspy, bluesy tone is at least sort of different and interesting. And speaking of Kara, this was actually her low point of the night, when she seemed to say that Danny should only sing the chorus because he doesn't sound as good on the verses. Um, Kara, you have to build up to something, as Simon said, not scream the whole song. Even Paula was mocking her, which is punishment enough for Kara.

Anoop--I thought this was OK, but was sort of stunned with all the praise the judges gave it. I like Anoop though--he picks interesting, if not always appropriate, songs, so I hope he stays around.

Megan--I like the sound of Megan's voice, but I'm starting to think she's kind of a one-trick pony--cool-sounding voice but can't really do a lot with it. This was fine, but I'd like to see her open it up and stretch a little more. I think the way her dress showed off two of her assets tonight will keep her around another week, no matter what people thought of her vocals. And is Megan the first singer to ever perform sick or does Kara just think so because she's never been a judge before? I'm pretty sure that happens to a couple people every year, Kara. And what did you expect Megan to do? Not perform at all and get eliminated?

Matt Giraud--Pretty good, even if it did become a soul song instead of a country song. I'll leave Kara alone on this one.

Bottom three: Sarver, Megan and Scott. Michael Sarver goes home. And I'm going to bed. Fingerhut out.

A decent start, but a bad change

2009-03-11T23:50:00.003-04:00

So I predicted that Jasmine would go, so I'm not disappointed. I am a little surprised by Jorge getting cut, not because he was such a good singer--although the beating he took from the judges Tuesday night was a little excessive--but because unlike the four wildcards, he did get enough votes to advance on his own. I would have thought he'd have enough support out there to carry him through the first week at least. But he had no chance to win, so it's no big deal

What is a big deal is this new one-time judges' veto power that was announced. Look, we've watched American Idol for seven years. Part of the deal is that occasionally people go home when they shouldn't. No one likes it, but it's the way it is. It's part of having the fans vote. Why exactly is there a burning need to change that? Especially when the judges now seem to be way more concerned with being "current" and "where you fit in the industry" than how well someone sings. And it also makes the whole process of getting voted out even tougher--you hear you've been voted out and then Ryan says, "Does he get to stay?" and they say "No, sorry." The singers are told they suck twice. Kind of harsh.

And of course, Idol couldn't introduce this new twist without being dishonest. Ryan said the veto power had to be used before the final 5. And yet, when they introduced it, they mentioned how this veto might have saved Tamyra Gray or Chris Daughtry (along with Jennifer Hudson and somebody I can't remember.) But since both Tamyra and Chris were eliminated during the final 4 round, it wouldn't have had any effect on either of their eliminations. Come on, Idol producers, how dumb do you think we are out here? It's like they're trying to make me mad.

Two more observations: The group sings are actually interesting this year, because how can you take your eyes off Scott? Is he going to bump into someone? Are they going to have him stand off to the side on anything too complicated? And actually, tonight he seemed to be participating in everything. Actually, I think his participation in the medleys is much more remarkable than his singing...

Finally, great to see Kelly Clarkson. And she was great.

Fingerhut out.

Backstory Idol

2009-03-11T00:52:00.003-04:00

My feelings for this season of Idol haven't changed. I think this is the worst group of finalists since at least season two. I think there are about eight singers who would be somewhere around ninth-place finishers in most previous years. I think that the show is no longer a singing competition, but has become mostly a "Who's got the better backstory" or "who is more commercial or can be packaged" competition. (This is the change I really don't understand--sure, it's never been totally a singing competition, but the whole focus on singing seemed to work for the show for the last seven years...) I don't like how the producers are manipulating the show so obviously. And of course, I still can't stand Kara and feel like the value of my Duke University degree is declining each week she sits at the judges' table. But I've decided to do a quick Idol wrapup tonight because it was the first week of the finals. But only a couple sentences for each competitor. And to sum up now, my problem with the singers is that most have decent voices, but they aren't particularly interesting singers or performers, or have anything particularly special about their vocal talents. So most of tonight's performances kind of made me shrug my shoulders and say, "Eh, that was alright, but I won't remember it tomorrow."

Oh, and what's the twist tomorrow (which if you didn't set your DVR to record a few minutes past 10 you may not have heard mentioned)? The way they described it, I think it's going to be some sort of judges' veto on the person voted out. I really hope it isn't, but from the way they described it, it seemed very possible ("change the face of the show," etc.) If it is, considering all the other manipulation of the show already, it's a very bad sign for the future of Idol.

Lil Rounds -- I found it kind of shouty, and I barely remember it now a couple hours later.

Scott MacIntyre-- Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder are blind and play the piano. They're also great singers, two of the best popular music singers of the last 50 years. So I don't understand the big deal about Scott MacIntyre being blind and playing the piano--because he's not a great singer (although he does seem pretty good on the ivories.) Can we stop acting like he is a good singer? As for whatever judge said it was very safe (Randy, I think), every time we've seen Scott sing it's been just like that. Did he do a Guns and Roses cover in Hollywood we didn't see or something? What did you think you were getting? He's a pleasant singer but nothing else.

Danny Gokey -- The overemphasis on Danny's family tragedy (which thankfully wasn't mentioned tonight) may have blinded me to an important fact about Danny--that guy can sing. He's even got a somewhat distinctive, bluesy/raspy voice. Yes, Simon was right, the dancing was horrible, but the singing was actually memorable.

Michael Sarver -- As for singing that wasn't particularly memorable, we have Michael the oil rig guy. Kind of like Scott--pleasant but nothing special. Oh, and Simon's strange advocacy for Michael reached a new low tonight when his critique was "you gave it 110 percent." Simon, what is wrong with you? After eight years, you can get a good comment from you just by trying hard? You're embarrassing yourself. Or maybe this is just him trying to say that this year's finalists are so bad, as long as you try hard you can make the top 5.

Jasmine Murray -- Why exactly did she get a wild card over like 12 better singers? I'm including people who didn't even sing in the wild card round, because there were plenty who showed more than she did. I guess they like to pick teens to attract the kids, but other than Jordin Sparks, don't they know that every teen singer usually peters out by the top 6 at the latest because they're just too young to deal with the pressure? Jasmine won't make it anywhere near that point. She was flat on the chorus--and for some reason only Paula was willing to point that out.

Kris Allen--Seems like a nice guy, good voice, but nothing special about him. I will say, though, with the guitar and everything, he at least gave an exciting performance.

Allison Iraheta -- With all the blandness, her "rocker chick" thing makes her stand out in a way the rocker chicks may not have stood out in past years. I didn't think she was as great as the judges thought she was--I thought she had a lot more power in her voice in her semifinal performance.

Anoop Desai -- I like Anoop, but this was a horrible song choice. Of all the songs from Thriller, Beat It is probably the song that sounds the most dated and of its era. Plus, it doesn't really go anywhere vocally. This makes two out of three poor song choices for Anoop. Having said that, what he did sing wasn't bad--and sounded a lot more exciting vocally than some other contestants.

Jorge Nunez -- I didn't think this was as bad as the judges thought it was--but I didn't like this guy that much in the semifinal round. Another, "Eh, I won't remember it in the morning?" performance.

Megan Joy Corkery -- Megan is very attractive (except for those tattoos). Unfortunately, she also made a bad song choice in picking the very repetitive and vocally unchallenging "Rockin Robin." I have no idea what she was thinking and hope she survives. I did like her bird call or whatever it was at the end.

Adam Lambert -- I said a couple weeks ago that Adam had a good voice but that I wasn't crazy about his "over the top" performances. Well, I'm a convert. He was great tonight. Simon was right--no one else was even close. Could he become tiring a couple months from now? Sure, but he kicked butt tonight.

Matt Giraud -- The piano livened it up, but otherwise another unexciting peformance.

Alexis Grace -- Another bad song choice (I've never really like the song, but putting aside my feelings, Dirty Diana is kind of repetitive) and I wasn't a big fan of the performance. I was a fan of that skirt that barely covered her crotch, though. Wow, Kara and company really dirtied her up--she'll be naked by April. Oh, and I'm now a fan of Alexis--anyone who teaches their baby to say "Seacrest out" is awesome.

Who's going home? Jasmine for sure, and unfortunately, perhaps Megan. I hope the teenage boy audience turns out for her tonight.

Some Idol thoughts

2009-03-04T23:09:00.003-05:00

So it does finally appear that Nick Mitchell/Norman Gentle is done--although I'm still a little stunned that he was there tonight in the mix for wild-card consideration. But I'm still not sure I want to go back to full Idol blogging, because the show this year is a complete mess.

I have many times criticized the producers of this show, particularly Nigel Lythgoe, for not really knowing what they were doing. But I now apologize to Nigel--he may have been evil, but he knew how to run the show better than the people he left behind. Has it ever been so obvious who the producers wanted to advance to the top 12 than this year, when the people who received the most attention in the earlier rounds also got the pimp, or 12th singing spot in the first three rounds? Even more puzzling is why those three people are getting pimped so hard. OK, Danny Gokey is a good human interest story because of his dead wife, but that's already getting old. And let's be honest--so far, he seems to me to be a good singer, but certainly nothing unique or special. Adam Lambert? I'll admit he's got a very good voice--but he's not everyone's cup of tea. Personally, I prefer my singers a little less over the top. As for Lil Rounds, she seems like a nice person, but is she really much different from the various belters we've had on the show over the years--from LaToya to LaKisha to Jennifer Hudson?

Even worse is that the first three-quarters of the final 12 appear to have been picked to satisfy some kind of diversity/interesting backstory requirement, with no regard for actually singing talent. We've got a blind guy, a blue-collar guy, a Puerto Rican, a single mom, a gay guy...And most of them have voices that are not unique or particularly interesting or memorable. Come on, let's be honest--Scott McIntyre is still around because he's blind. I love Bruce Hornsby and was glad Scott picked one of his song to sing. And Scott has a very pleasant voice. But every wild card they picked tonight has a better voice than he does--and probably almost all are better singers too.

In fact, that group of eight picked for wild cards is a really good group--if they were the first eight of the final group, I'd be really happy. They're a much more interesting group than the actual first nine finalists. You've got some really good, interesting male voices in Anoop and Ricky. You've got some really interesting female voices in Megan and Jesse. Tatiana is only there because she's completely insane--but she does have a good voice. I thought Von was surprisingly good last night. Even Jasmin and Matt seemed to have some good potential in Hollywood and the audition rounds.

So we're going to lose four or five singers Thursday night and keep a bunch of mediocre singers. Wow, how exciting. And we'll get to hear Kara say stupid stuff like "that song didn't tell me what it's like to go shopping with you." Since when did this become all about "what kind of artist" you are in the first week? Can't we figure out who is a good singer--because the judges sure aren't doing a good job of it? Kara, please don't give Duke University a bad name by continuing this ridiculous focus on personality over, um, talent. This show is just making me angry. Hopefully I can make it through tomorrow night.

Fingerhut out.

I'm done, for now

2009-02-25T22:06:00.002-05:00

I've been blogging about American Idol for three years, and I wrote an e-mail reviewing the show for a couple seasons before that. But after watching Norman Gentle/Nick Mitchell "sing" tonight, and then hear three of the four judges praise him, I've had enough. If American Idol isn't going to take itself seriously, then why should I? His whole bit is a joke, but for some reason Randy, Paula and Kara don't care. It's an insult to everyone who actually performed on the show and got critical comments from the judges--when they were 100 times better than Norman/Nick. How do you think Jamar Rogers, or Frankie Jordan or other people who lost sing-offs and didn't make the final 36 feel watching this joke?

Look, I know American Idol is a television show, but it's an enjoyable show because while it can be silly and stupid sometimes, the whole idea behind it is so compelling. Some total unknown who no one ever heard of in December is going to be a huge star by Memorial Day (and perhaps unknown again by the next Memorial Day, but let's not get into that.) And it's genuinely enjoyable and full of suspense to watch each week, see what everyone is going to sing, whether they'll pull it off, how the judges are going to react. But if we're going to mock that with some novelty act, forget it.

There were a lot of other things wrong with tonight's show (specifically the focus, especially by Kara, on this whole "that song didn't show me who you are as an artist" crap. Really, Kara? Someone is supposed to show who they are as an artist with just one song? Don't be ridiculous. Half the fun of American Idol, actually is seeing people figure that out after a few weeks.) But Norman Gentle is the biggest. I'm going to watch the Duke-Maryland game.

We didn't get off to the best start

2009-02-19T01:13:00.005-05:00

So Alexis Grace wasn't as good as the judges said she was, but she was still probably the clear best girl on Tuesday night. And the same goes for Danny Gokey--he wasn't deserving of the whooping and hollering from Paula, Randy and Kara, but he was good, and with his backstory (but please, friend of Danny Gokey, holding up a photo of Danny and his late wife for the camera may be starting to push it), it was clear he was going to the final 12. But Michael Sarver? Wow, Simon has even more power than I thought. It's clear that his sort of odd endorsement of him Tuesday night--when he clearly isn't much more than a middle of the pack singer in the group and a pleasant but far from memorable vocalist--must have helped push him over the edge. I mean, really, was there anything special about his performance Tuesday night or Wednesday night that said to you, "Hey, this guy can win American Idol?" All I said was, "This guy might, if he's lucky, finish tenth."

And it's a shame, because there were at least two other singers, Anoop and Ricky Braddy, who were better than him last night and just generally have better voices. And Ricky used to serve chicken fingers--is that so much better than being an oil roughneck or whatever it is that they've told us about Michael to garner sympathy for him? I presume Anoop and Ricky will be brought back for the wildcard round, but who knows how many other good singers they'll have to battle against? By the way, my other picks for possible wildcards in the group would be Tatiana and perhaps Ann Marie. And speaking of wildcards, why did they do that to poor Tatiana? When they said Anoop and Michael were within 20,000 votes of each other (the most information they've ever given out about a semifinal voting contest), it was clear that they were two and three in the guys, and that Danny was number one (because there's no way he was behind both of those guys.) That means Tatiana was no better than the fifth biggest vote getter overall, and yet they tried to make her think she might have gotten the most votes. Those AI producers--they just love to treat people cruelly for our amusement.

But I'm not angry. I spent the night at the Capitals hockey game and saw Alexander Ovechkin score one of the most amazing goals you'll ever see--and certainly the best goal I've ever seen in person. Watch it here. It's much better than any performance from Tuesday night's Idol.

Fingerhut out.

The most exciting Tuesday night of the year

2009-02-17T22:18:00.003-05:00

It's one of my favorite Tuesday nights of the year--he first night of the Idol semifinals! And tonight's show didn't disappoint--well, maybe it had some disappointing singers, but only three are going to advance anyway. It had everything you could want from an Idol episode: some good singing, some really bad singing, some funny judging exchanges, and some spacey moments from Paula.

Before we run down the singers--which I'm going to try to do more briefly this year both because some people complain it takes too long to read and because my (not-so-new-anymore) job has a 45-minute commute instead of a 10-minute commute and thus I can't sleep as late on Wednesday mornings as I used to--a quick word about the new format and Joanna Pacitti. First, I don't really care that Pacitti was bounced from the show--Simon said anyone who forgot their words would be eliminated in Hollywood Week and then she forgot her words during apparently every performance. So she should have been eliminated for that. As for the new format, this is how they did it the first three seasons, and I don't remember anyone--at least in seasons two and three--where I said, "Wow, it's too bad there weren't enough slots in their group for them, because they were really good." If there are too many good people in their group but they're really good, they'll get put through in the wild card. At least with this new format, you actually have to win your way into the final 12, instead of the way you could basically back in in the last few years if you had enough screen time in the first few weeks and didn't screw up. It makes singers go out and take chances (although some of them took risks that were way too big for them.)

As for how they divided the three groups--I'd like to think they just drew numbers out of a hat. Or maybe the judges seeded them, like in the NCAA tournament, so the people they thought were the best were in different groups. But having watched American Idol for eight years, I'm sure the producers selected the groups in a way that would maximize the chances that the people they liked would end up in the final 12. We'll see how that turns out

And before we get to the singers, one request. I work in an office with one co-worker and he doesn't watch American Idol. So, please, leave some comments for me. I want to communicate with other people about the show. Thank you. Let's get to the singers.

Jackie Tohn ("Little Less Conversation")--Whenever I hear the name Jackie Tohn, I always think of former Houston Astros shortstop Dickie Thon. I have no idea why, but I just wanted to get that out there--because I don't think I'm going to be hearing the name Jackie Tohn much after this week. That was just weird--it started off as some lounge singer version of "Little Less Conversation" then got fast but stayed weird throughout. And Randy might have like the outfit, but I thought it was awful. To her credit, unlike a lot of recent singers in this round of Idol in past years (as I mentioned above), at least she was adventuresome.

Ricky Braddy ("A Song for You")--Ricky was the first of a few people tonight that fell into the same category for me--I wasn't crazy about their song choice, and, in some cases, their performances, but I loved the tone and power of their voice. Ricky Braddy, who I don't think we'd heard sing, has a really nice voice. I hope we can hear more of it. But I just thought his performance of this song was too showy and full of vocal runs. I prefer the more straightforward performance Elliott Yamin gave of this song three seasons ago. Two more things: The Braddy Bunch? That's going to get old quick if Ricky advances to the finals. And one of the great judge exchanges of the night came when Simon told Ricky he needed to get more confidence and Paula said, in what seemed like an insult directed at Simon, to "Take lessons from him." Simon turned it right around and said "Why not?" Well done, Cowell.

Quick judge interlude: Simon, of course, is still mostly correct about everything. But I will say Kara was much better tonight than she has been, actually offering something besides "I like you."

Alexis Grace ("Never Loved A Man")--Wow, I can't believe how slutty she looks now, just on the basis of that advice from the judges. Once again, her voice sounded very good and strong, but I wasn't crazy about the song. She gave a good performance of it, but I'd just like to hear a song with a little bit more of a melody before I pronounce her a contender. It may be a classic song, but it was a lot of vocal runs and not a lot of just simply singing.

Neil Patrick Harris and Ted Danson, together in the audience? What's up? Were two of the best sitcom characters of the last 25 years just hanging out together? Actually, can you imagine Barney Stinson and Sam Malone going out to pick up girls together? Well, if there's ever a Cheers-How I Met Your Mother crossover episode, I think we've got a storyline....

Brent Keith ("Hick Town")--I'm not a big fan of country music, or at least real genuine country music (I do like the more pop country music), and so I didn't really like this much. It was, as Simon said, forgettable. Great judge line: Simon responding to Paula's invocation of Bucky Covington by saying "What has happened to Bucky Covington?" I actually would like to know, but I'm not curious enough to stop what I'm doing and Google now--which I guess says something about my lack of interest in Bucky Covington.

Stevie Wright ("You Belong With Me")--Speaking of pop country, I really do like Taylor Swift. While her singing voice can be, for lack of a better word, pitchy-and her songs don't require a particularly powerful voice to sing--she writes good songs with some interesting melodies. And Stevie Wright, to say the least, didn't exactly do Taylor Swift justice. That was just bad--a tuneless mess. I will give her mom a little credit, though--she called the judges on the silliness they give us every year. They told Stevie to be young (which is kind of a silly critique anyway--if you sing a Beatles song are you old fashioned?), and then when she sang a young song, they told her they liked it when she sang the songs she used to sing. Of course, the main problem here wasn't just song choice, but bad singing. Best line of the night from Simon came here, when one of the other judgest said "America votes," and he said, "But they listen to me." And because this will probably be my only chance, I just want to say that Stevie Wright shares a first name with one of my most fondly remembered AI semifinalists, Stevie Scott. I will never forget when she told the judges after a bad critique that "I can bring it" if she received another chance. Unfortunately, she never received that second chance--nor did she ever define what she could bring and why she didn't "bring it" to her previous performance. Stevie Wright didn't bring it either.

Anoop Desai ("Angel of Mine")--Another in the category of great-sounding voice, so-so performance and song choice. I got really excited when Anoop said during the taped package that he was going to "sing songs that I have wanted to sing when watching at home." But when he said after singing that he picked it because he wanted to thank people or whatever and that it was the first R&B song he ever heard--Anoop, haven't you learned anything from watching the show? You never pick a song because you like its lyrical content, you pick a song because it's right for your voice and then work on connecting with the words. I kind of always liked this song because I liked the hook in the way "Angel of mine" comes in during the chorus, but the rest of the song is kind of boring, and there was way too much background singing necessary which distracted from Anoop. But I hope, even though I believe he's a Tar Heel, that he moves on to the final 12--because I believe that he has a chance to win if he picks the right songs (I'm not sure there's anyone else I could say that about yet, with confidence.)

Casey Carlson ("Every Little Thing She Does is Magic")--I wrote in my notes that Casey's performance may have been the worst semifinal performance in American Idol history. After thinking about that, I'm probably exaggerating. Sanjaya had a couple bad performances in the semifinal round, Antonella Barba was pretty awful at least once, and Janay Castane was probably the all-time worst. But Casey is a contender. I laughed out loud twice during her performance because I couldn't believe how bad it was. The performance was so bad it actually moved Randy to utter the funniest thing that's ever come out of his mouth on this show--him singing "Everything about it was wrong" to the tune of "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic." And let me add--this was a terrible song choice, but that didn't matter. She was so bad on this song I can't imagine her being all that good on any other song. (It was also hilarious that the judges' critiques were so bad that by the time they got to Simon it was like a funeral was happening in the studio.) On the bright side, Casey Carlson is really hot. I was watching in HD and she was stunning. (And there are photos of her in a bikini floating around the Internet, if you're interested.) But even the chance to see her in different outfits every week can't justify her getting anywhere near the final 12, or even anywhere near the wild card round. And as my friend John texted me after Casey's performance, "At least she will have porn to fall back on."

Michael Sarver ("I Don't Want to Be")-- Does someone have to sing this song every year on the show? I'm sure Michael is a nice guy, as everyone said, but this was just kind of pedestrian and boring. He has a decent voice, but there's nothing distinctive about it like an Anoop or Ricky Braddy. I don't know why Simon is so eager to see him get to the final 12 (probably some theory that "Middle America" will love him), but he has no chance to win.

Ann Marie Boskovich ("Natural Woman")--I've liked Ann Marie from her first audition. She's very pretty (especially in HD) and reminds me, looks-wise, of my old favorite Katharine McPhee. But my reaction to her picking this song was simply "Why?" Why would you pick a legendary song and think, in your first performance on Idol, you could do it justice? It's nice to take risks, but there's taking risks and then there's needlessly putting yourself in danger. I'm really disappointed.

Stephen Fowler ("Rock With You")--Not as bad as the judges said, but not good. I did like the tone of his voice, but he forgot his words during Hollywood Week and then was lackluster tonight. I did feel bad, though, that just because he didn't have any family there, he didn't get a post-song interview (Danny Gokey didn't either, but he got a question after his song).

Tatiana del Toro ("Saving All My Love for You")--As annoying as she is, Tatiana actually did show some pipes on this song. I also found her overly dramatic end to the song, where she closed her eyes and came out of the "singing trance" she was in very slowly, absolutely hilarious. But how can you separate Tatiana's not bad singing from her horrifying, annoying personality? You can't. Although that "this is my dream and it's up to you to keep it alive" plea as they went to commercial was pretty hilarious too...Maybe I'm starting to warm up to her--although she might also be mentally ill...

Danny Gokey ("Hero")--Wow, what a surprise. The guy who has gotten more screen time than anyone but Bikini Girl and Tatiana gets the pimp spot. He was good, but I really don't think he deserved the tongue bath he got from Randy, Paula and Kara. He's got a nice voice, but there are certainly people with more distinctive and interesting voices that sang tonight. The guy's got a moving personal story, but please, judges, don't let that alter your opinions.

So who's not going home? The top girl will probably be Alexis Grace. The top guy will probably be Danny Gokey. And the third person to qualify? Let's say Anoop. As for who I'd like to see advance, I don't have a problem with any of those people, although I'd like to see a little more of Ricky Braddy too. And that's it for me--Fingerhut out!

Norman Gentle? Really?

2009-02-11T07:21:00.003-05:00

All I could think of while watching Tuesday night's American Idol is what a bad job of storytelling they've done this year. Now former producer Nigel Lythgoe once said that he considered American Idol three different shows -- the auditions, Hollywood Week and the rest -- and thus didn't feel any need to follow the stories he'd set up in the auditions into Hollywood Week. Apparently, his successors agree and have taken it even more to an extreme, because it's amazing how many stories, good stories, were set up in the first three weeks and then basically abandoned until tonight. Like the homeless girl. And even thought we got closure on Leneshe Young Tuesday night, it wasn't quite satisfying--since we saw her sing pretty well, especially compared to all those people that forgot words or (like Kai) couldn't even hit a note. The judges said they were considering the whole week, not just the final sing, so it's hard to figure out why certain decisions were made considering so many people who were shown tonight hadn't appeared on our screens singing since mid-January. And of course, there were certain people we still weren't told about--I think Amy Winehouse Jr. made it, and I didn't catch any mention of tattoed arm girl.

We do know way too much about Tatiana and Norman Gentle, and I can't believe either of those people are going to make the final 36. Can't believe and hope they won't. Tatiana is just annoying and not as good as she thinks she is--but Norman Gentle just isn't a good singer. He's making fun of the show. Why would they let him be part of it? Norman Gentle in the top 36 would be a sign that the show isn't taking itself seriously, so why should we take it seriously?

Anyway, I'm rambling, so I'll just say that the most amused I was tonight was seeing everyone party at the end of the show like they'd made the finals, when a couple dozen of that is going to get cut tonight, before they ever get to sing again. They do know that, right? But at least they had fun.

Welcome back, group sings

2009-02-05T01:03:00.003-05:00

All I could think of while watching tonight's entertaining episode of American Idol was "I still can't believe they got rid of the group sings last season." Maybe that's why last season was so boring.

I believe they said last year that the reason they got rid of it was because it wasn't really relevant to the rest of the competition (no other group sings) and being a pop star. While it may be true that if you win American Idol, you never have to sing with three other people, I would think you'd still have to collaborate with others on songs and performances at some point, so that didn't really make much sense. But more importantly, it gives you a sense of both the personalities of the contestants, but also how they hold up under pressure. We saw that Bikini Girl, whatever her singing talent or looks, is completely nuts. (You couldn't have taken off those heels while you were practicing the group sing?) We saw that Tatiana is close. We saw that some people really work well together. And we got some really creative performances--like the first group that went with the guy whose wife died. Most importantly, it was fun to watch.

So I won't spend too much time complaining about how certain people who were featured in the audition shows have virtually disappeared. I think blind guy made it, but have we even seen him perform in Hollywood? I think arm tattoo girl did too, but why did she disappear? Did Amy Winehouse Jr. make it? Hopefully we'll find out on Tuesday

Hollywood Week is always enjoyable

2009-02-03T23:05:00.002-05:00

As I said in the title, Hollywood Week is always fun, although I'm still not sure how many actually good singers we have out of the 104 that are left. I wasn't sure if half the people we saw tonight were people we were supposed to know and remember from the auditions or not--other than the obvious ones like barefoot girls who lost her parents and sort of looks like a young Britney Spears. But I still enjoyed it more than the long slog of the last three weeks. A few quick observations, because I still can't tell that much about how good a singer is from a 10 second a capella clip (I agree with Bikini Girl that singers are better with music):

Barry Manilow mentoring during Hollywood Week? Wow, he's either a really nice guy or really desperate to get on national television. I did enjoy watching the singers actually take notes on his advice, stuff like "make the song your own." Yeah, that's fresh advice.

That guy Dennis at the beginning of the show who Simon said was making weird faces when he sang? Who cared about the faces? He wasn't a very good singer. Why didn't they tell him that? Maybe that would have calmed him down? Or maybe not...

Had we seen that Stephen Fowler guy that sang the Stevie Wonder song that Randy said was really difficult? Because he was good.

Von Smith--Not my thing. I prefer slightly--OK a lot--less dramatics from my singers.

They put that Norman Gentle guy through? Really? Why are they wasting his time and ours?

Sad to see girl who takes care of her grandmother was eliminated. She seemed cool.

I don't know how good a singer Bikini Girl is, but the whole thing she's got going with Kara--that's the best thing the show has going for it right now. Keep her around.

Where was ugly arm tattoo girl tonight? Did they show her?

Yeah, I know his father has MS and doesn't perform anymore, but does an Osmond really need American Idol to get a break in the music business? And if he does, is it beacuse he isn't that great?

That's it--but I'm eagerly looking forward to one of the best episodes of the season tomorrow night. Gotta love group sing night. Can't believe they eliminated that last year--but as I've said many times, the American Idol producers can be pretty dumb.

Fingerhut out.

Some hope in Salt Lake

2009-01-28T22:25:00.003-05:00

After a really lackluster first five audition episodes of Idol, with so many mediocre singers getting tickets to Hollywood (really, there's been two or three on each show that I've said, "C'mon, really? They're letting them go through?"), at least in Salt Lake City tonight we finally got a handful of singers that I could say, "OK, there's a top 12 candidate." (Although we still had our share of mediocre singers, like that senior class president kid. He couldn't even sing the melody of the songs he did.)

I liked Amy Winehouse Jr., I liked the girl with the ugly tattoos covering most of her right arm, and the tall Hawaiian girl wasn't as good as they said but still wasn't bad. And I have a soft spot for the girl whose parents died but sort of looks like Britney Spears. Combine them with the girl at the end of last night's show who sort of reminded me of Katharine McPhee (the one who was told to come back as a "new person"), and we're finally getting somewhere--although it would be nice if I could remember any of the guys that have sung the last couple weeks.

I'm still a little worried about this season--we have one too many judges and way too many singers who aren't anything special. And about that new judge--Kara's statement on Tuesday night that she won't be satisfied this season until Simon "tries something" on her was really pathetic. You saw the look on Simon's face--he was thinking, "It's great I get to spend all this time sitting next to two women who desperatly want to jump me. And I can't believe this new one is more desperate than Paula."

But after one more audition episode Thursday night, we're finally going to Hollywood, and that's always fun.

Fingerhut out.

Still unimpressed by the judge addition

2009-01-22T03:25:00.004-05:00

Because of work-related business/exhaustion, I'm a day behind on Idol--I watched the San Francisco auditions tonight. (I'll get back on schedule by Hollywood.) But my quick observations from the past two audition shows:

*Have there ever been more people that got to Hollywood by begging? This is ridiculous. In San Francisco, two out of just 12 singers who advanced only really made it because they begged for it, not because they were standout singers. This could be a warning sign for a really bad year, if these beggars end up geting through to the semifinals (and we all know the decisions in Hollywood can be even odder than those in the original audition cities. See: Sanjaya.)

*Still not really feeling Kara. The last thing we needed was another judge to argue with Simon, and other than that I don't think she's added that much to the panel so far. I guess the true test will, as I said last week, come in the semifinals.

*Pretty unmemorable group of auditioners so far, both good and bad.I can barely remember anyone from last week--maybe the girl who took care of her grandmother--and San Francisco brought us nobody particulaly memorable except the guy who takes care of his mother. Hmm, kind of a theme? But if he makes it to the finals, who will take care of his Mom?

*Loved the kid who hugged Simon.

*No stupid medley of bad singers singing a popular song! Thank you!

Fingerhut out

No wrap-up tonight

2009-01-15T02:02:00.003-05:00

Beacuse this is only the audition round, I watched the Caps-Penguins hockey game tonight. I'll try to blog something about tonight's show at some point in the next couple days.

Not crazy about the new judge

2009-01-14T00:27:00.003-05:00

Yes, I sort of took a blogging hiatus--but American Idol is back, so it's time for me to return as well. (And maybe in the next couple weeks, those posts I've been contemplating about the terrible yet compelling television show "Momma's Boys"--the first reality dating show to feature a debate about Jewish intermarriage--and the slight improvement in hockey coverage by the Washington Post will actually get written.)

Just like the last couple years, I'm not going to do posts during the audition round breaking down each singer because there's not much I can say about a 15-second a capella performance--and because a good chunk of the people we saw tonight we'll never see again (or see for a couple minutes in the Hollywood round). So instead, I'll give you my opinion on the changes to this year's installment of Idol--the most important of which I'm much less excited about now than before the premiere.

I will say, though, that of course I'm a fan of Bikini Girl--although I doubt she makes it out of Hollywood. And Blind Guy is a nice story, but I guess it doesn't make me marvel as much as it is supposed to--after all, two of the great singers of the last 50 or so years, Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, were blind, so it's not like it's unprecedented for a blind person to succeed in the music business. On to the changes:

First of all, there's the producers' stated intention to decrease the emphasis on bad auditions and focus more on the aspirational and inspirational qualities of the show. Of course this is good news. While there were certainly some bad auditions still aired on tonight's show, it didn't seem like the show was reveling in them as it was doing a few years ago. And of course, the whole ad campaign for the show the last few weeks has been built around "Isn't American Idol great because it makes stars out of nobodies?" instead of "Aren't these ididots funny?" True Idol fans watch the show for the first reason, not the second. And while the audition shows get the highest ratings of the year, save for the finale, it can't be worth alienating many of the true fans of the show for the small percentage of American who just tune in to watch bad singers for a few weeks.

True story: I was on a blind date a couple months ago and for whatever reason American Idol came up. The woman I was with told me that she watched American Idol every year, but only the audition shows. She'd never seen one minute of any other episode of the show. I didn't quite know how to handle this information--did this mean she was a cruel person who just got enjoyment out of watching people embarrass themselves? It didn't seem like it. More troublesome--how could someone not even be curious enough to watch the other portions of the show after watching the audition shows and enjoying them? That puzzled me. But for the record, I did go out on a second date with her, but not a third date--and neither of those decisions had anything to do with her American Idol viewing habits.

Anyway, the decreased emphasis on bad singers may come because the evil producer Nigel Lythgoe has left the show to concentrate on "So You Think You Can Dance" and his partner, Ken Warwick, has fully taken over the reins--another change to the show I like. Hopefully, Ken, unlike Nigel, will take into account the longtime complaint of viewers that certain singers get to the semifinals without any previous air time (and are then often quickly eliminated) while we get minute details of other singers' lives. I'm not optimistic about this, though, because Ken didn't eliminate one of my pet peeves--the stupid "Let's get all the bad singers to sing one song [tonight, "Wanted Dead or Alive"] and then we can splice it together for a lame medley." If there's a bunch of singers in the top 36 that he haven't seen before, but we wasted three or four minutes each audition show for one of those medleys, I'm not going to be happy.

Speaking of the top 36, that's new, too. Instead of seasons 4-7, in which we started with 24 semifinalists and eliminated four each week to get down to 12 finalists, we're going back to the original format. They'll be broken up into three groups of 12, and each week the top three will have to win their way into the finals--with a wild card round filling out the top 12. Interestingly, the decision to change the format back in season four was made because the producers didn't like having someone who had become a star in the audition and Hollywood round only be on the air once in four weeks during the semifinals. But they--correctly--have realized that having them on every week during the semifinals has now led to overexposure and fans getting tired of the singers by the end of the season. I also think this is a good move.

And another positive sign is the decision to only show three weeks of audition shows instead of four (although in week three, they'll actually have three shows, so technically they are only showing one less audition episode) along with an extra week of Hollywood shows. This is an excellent decision, since the audition shows always get boring by the fourth week--and the Hollywood shows are always interesting. They even brought back the group sings this year.

But the biggest change of this season is obviously the new judge, Kara DioGuardi. I wasn't sure how I felt about this until I read a couple interviews with her over the last couple weeks, and liked what she had to say about how she would judge the show--that she would tell people that a certain song wasn't right for them, or suggest a way that they should have sung the song so that they didn't sound just like Mariah Carey when she sang the song, etc.

I also was intrigued that Kara graduated from Duke University in 1993, which meant we spent three years on the same campus--since I graduated from Duke in 1992. No, I don't remember her, don't recall the name, and she doesn't look familiar, so unfortunately I don't have any insight into her. But if we ever met, at least I'd have something to talk about with her besides American Idol. I am kind of puzzled that both in the Entertainment Weekly article I read about her and on the David Letterman show Monday night, she said she was "pre-law" at Duke. As far as I recall, there was no "pre-law" major at Duke and I don't really recall--although I may be wrong--that there was some sort of set of courses that people planning to go to law school usually took--unlike "pre-med," which also wasn't a major but entailed someone taking certain types of courses like organic chemistry. So that's a little odd, but if that makes it sound as if I'm doubting that she was a Duke student, I'm not. After watching Kara tonight, she seemed to think very highly of herself--and that's a very common trait among many Duke women. (Yeah, sorry, that was kind of a cheap shot...)

Anyway, having a new judge did excite me for the new season in a way that I don't think I would have been normally after last year's long, often boring season--because they were shaking up the show without changing the essence of it. And she had a very impressive record of writing pop songs (for instance, the song she wrote with Christina Aguilera, "Ain't No Other Man," is really good, and she actually wrote a pop song, "Pieces of Me," that was catchy enough to force Americans to listen to Ashlee Simpson for a few months.) But after watching tonight, I'm not as excited about Kara. Her opinions so far didn't seem to differ much from the other judges on the panel, and adding a fourth judge to a judging panel that already has a lot of dead weight (at least Paula is entertaining when she says nothing, but Randy barely speaks English now) may not be a real good idea. The real test, though, won't really come until the first semifinal round, so I guess I'll give it a few weeks.

That's enough for tonight. Fingerhut out.

Get ready for the "Fall-Asleep-On-The-Couch Olympics"

2008-07-17T11:57:00.003-04:00

Every year that the Olympics come around, complaints about the TV coverage seem to be almost as common as discussion about who will end up on a Wheaties box. Some complaints are valid, such as the excessive jingoism in the coverage of the Atlanta Olympics, reaching its nadir when John Tesh sounded like he was openly rooting for Russian gymnasts to fall, and the excessive amount of profile pieces NBC ran during the 2000 Sydney Games. Some are less so, like the complaint that NBC waits until primetime to show all the good events, and thus they're on tape delay and not live. Yes, it's annoying, but from a business perspective it's the only thing NBC can do--they pay hundreds of millions of dollars for the rights to television the Games, and they need to sell ads to recoup that money at high rates. They're not going to broadcast the women's gymnastics final at 11 in the morning on a Wednesday, when the vast majority of people are at work and not watching TV. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, this wasn't that big a deal--if you wanted to, it wasn't that tough to avoid hearing the Olympic results on the radio or TV for a few hours before the primetime coverage began.

But with the Internet, it's virtually impossible to not run across the results for that women's gymnastics final if it's over at noon on Wednesday afternoon., and thus it's a lot less exciting to watch. So NBC took steps to combat that problem in Beijing, by getting all the swmming finals, and the team and all-around gymnastics finals, scheduled in the morning in China--which means with the 12-hour time difference, they'll be in the evening here, live in prime time.

As a longtime Olympic viewing fan, I was very excited about that--but when I checked the actual Beijing schedule of events (which is strangely not available on the NBC Olympics Website), I could already anticipate the complaints about this year's broadcasts. Most viewers on the East Coast are going to have to take a nap when they get home from work, or at least load up on caffeine at dinner, if they want to be awake to see those gymnastics finals--and to a lesser extent, whether Michael Phelps can get those eight gold medals--because they aren't actually going to be in the 8-11 p.m. block known as primetime. First of all, the swimming finals are scheduled to start at 10 a.m. Beijing time--which means 10 p.m. East Coast time. So on some nights--for instance, the night of the 400 meter freestyle relay--Phelps won't be swimming until about 11:30 p.m. OK , that's not that bad, but still kind of late for a lot of people.

But check out the gymnastics finals. The women's all-around gymnastics finals, one of the feature events of the games, won't even start on Thursday night until 11:15 p.m., and won't wrap up until about 1 a.m., according to the schedule. The men's all-around the previous night ends after 1:30 a.m.! Even the women's team competition won't finish until about midnight, after starting after 10 p.m.

At least there will be plenty of time to get a nap--since NBC's coverage from 8-10 p.m. appears to be a snoozefest on those evenings. They promise live beach volleyball (I'm already yawning--other than the fact that the women are in bikinis, why is this sport so heavily featured by NBC?) and stuff like taped synchronized diving (double the diving fun!). Even stranger is that after those events the first week, virtually nothing will be live the second week of the games--no track and field except the marathons and live diving semifinals but not finals. OK, the new BMX event will be live, and having caught a glimpse of the trials, it looks kind of cool. But that's about it for primetime after swimming ends. So the live stuff is going to be on really late in primetime the first week, and most of the stuff we see in primetime the second week will have been over for 12 hours once we see it. Sure, the China element will add some interest, but I wonder if NBC is nervous about the ratings for these Olympics. Because with that kind of schedule, I would.

Reason No. 858,423 to not like Daniel Snyder

2008-07-13T22:25:00.007-04:00

You'd think that a sports radio station in Washington, D.C. would want the pre-eminent expert on baseball in Washington, D.C. to host a show on its airwaves. You'd think the station would consider it a selling point, a coup. But you'd be wrong.

Phil Wood's two-hour Saturday morning baseball show on WTEM Sportstalk 980 disappeared this week. He was one of the first victims of Redskins owner Dan Snyder, who bought the station a few weeks ago and took control of it at the beginning of July. Don't worry about Phil--he was already cohosting "The Tom Davis Show" broadcast on a Baltimore sports radio station (and simulcast by MASN)this past Saturday morning. But what he said about the reason for his departure from WTEM confirmed all my fears about what will be the sad future of sports talk radio in Washington.

Much of the talk since Snyder's purchase has revolved around whether he now will allow criticism of the Redskins on the stations--whether he will create some sort of "Pravda" version of sports radio. That's certainly an important concern, but I think a little bit overstated. There's no way to have a sports radio station that anyone would want to listen to without people criticizing the playcalling of the Jim Zorn in the game that week or complaining about Jason Campbell or saying that the Redskins should have drafted a defensive lineman. (I could see the Redskins owner decreeing no one could say anything bad about him on the air, which would probably make him look like more of an a-hole than anything anyone could say about him.)

No, the bigger problem is that Snyder would turn the station into all-Redskins, all-the-time, to the exclusion of all other teams in town. WTEM's biggest flaw as a station over the years is that a number of its hosts, most notably its afternoon rush hour team, either don't know enough about or don't care to talk about anything besides the Redskins and perhaps a little basketball on occassion. But the station has been making some improvements in that area over the last year, actually spending signifcant time during the Caps playoff run, for instance, talking hockey. But it looks like Snyder and his people don't like that.

Phil Wood said Saturday that WTEM's new program director told him that he didn't think the station wanted to "move forward" with a baseball show at this time. Remember, it's not like this was a daily program. Phil Wood's show was on two hours a week! Apparently, Dan Snyder thinks that's too much time to spend on talking about the Nationals. I can't imagine he'll treat the Caps, or anyone else besides the Redskins much differently. Those people who want to hear Larry Michael do live shows from Redskins Park 52 weeks a year are in luck. Every other Washington sports fan are not.

That was a surprise

2008-05-21T23:15:00.002-04:00

Although I felt David Cook had been the stronger and more interesting singer throughout the season, I figured Archuleta, who was the strong favorite since the first competition show of the season, put it away on Tuesday night. But instead, we had what probably has to be considered the first upset, or at least surprise result, in Idol history. Even more surprising than the result, though, would have to be the 12-point margin that David Cook won by tonight. It wasn't even close, which I guess means that while Archuleta might have had a strong fan base all year, all the fans of eliminated Idols ended up choosing Cook. (That's, of course, if American Idol can be analyzed like a presidential election, which it probably can't, since presidential elections only allow you to vote once and there's no text messaging in your ballot.)

As for the typically way too long show--imagine, it's a two hour show to announce one name, and they still couldn't announce that name before 10:00--there was good and bad.

First the bad: The absolute worst was that endless, unfunny promo for the Mike Myers movie "The Love Guru." Those 10 minutes were everything that's wrong with this show: advertising over entertainment. And most amazing was the fact that in a week where they had to prepare a ton of songs--both for Tuesday and Wednesday nights--the Davids were forced to spend a couple hours watching what looks like a terrible movie and hanging out with Mike Myers. Just insane.... That Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr. bit as "The Pips" was almost as bad. It was a one-joke sketch that went on for what seemed like a half-hour and was also essentially an advertisement--since all three of those guys are in a movie together, Tropic Thunder, later this summer. Despite what Ryan said, would people actually download that for I-tunes, even if the money is going to charity? I'd donate more to charity if I never had to see that sketch again.....Jimmy Kimmel was pretty funny on "Idol Gives Back," but that appearance tonight was not impressive...That Renaldo Lapuz "You Are My Brother" thing was very funny in the auditions, not so funny with a marching band and cheerleaders...Did Jordin Sparks' last song onstage as American Idol have to be some melodyless bore? It was cute that Blake Lewis was singing along, though. And finally, we should never have to hear Amanda Overmyer sing any part of the song "Faith" ever again. That was just completely wrong.

What I liked: David Cook with ZZ Top--not bad. Brooke White with Graham Nash--also enjoyable. Seeing Matt Rogers and Mikalah Gordon again--and Mikalah's jumping up and down and screaming with David Cook's music teacher was hilarious. Also hilarious was having Jason Castro sing an encore of his best performance of the season--not usually done on the final results show, but they obviously didn't want to make Jason actually have to learn a new song.... Donna Summer and Bryan Adams were both fine, but unfortunately we had to sit through medleys from all the singers before they appeared.... I liked that they put Carly and Michael--the two contestants eliminated too early--together for a duet, but I won't be looking for it on Youtube tomorrow... Seal was good, but I wish Syesha wasn't there to slow him down...I didn't like or dislike the Jonas Brothers, but aren't they basically a less talented Hanson? George Michael was very good, but if he was the "biggest star in the world" promised by Nigel on Ryan's radio show the other day, as I read in the press, then Nigel is even more confused than I thought he was. Finally, I'm a sucker for emotional displays, so I liked to see David choked up, and the whole "Give it up for Archuleta" stuff was nice to see too.

So we've come to the end of another year of American Idol, a year which has, until this week, almost made me lose my passion for the show. By January, that passion will probably return--but we'll have to see. Until January--although I will be blogging on other things--Fingerhut out.

That surprisingly wasn't that bad

2008-05-20T22:22:00.003-04:00

I've never been less excited for an American Idol final than tonight. Most years I have a hard time getting through the day, and when I'm able to leave race home hoping to get home so I can watch it live at 8. Today, I had a brief conversation with some coworkers about the final, read maybe one article on the Internet about it, and when I got of work around 8, went to pick up a couple things at the grocery store before I went home. I even turned on the Nats-Phillies baseball game for a little bit. It was official: American Idol had become a chore to watch, even for me, a longtime obsessive of the show. (I'll try to provide a couple reasons for this at the end of tonight's blog.)

And yet when I turned on the DVR and watched the show tonight, I was surprisingly entertained. For a combination of reasons--five out of the six songs sung were new, the coronation songs weren't quite as bad as in the past, and because one of the two singers was sensational--this might have been the best final since the classic Clay-Ruben showdown in season two. (You could argue season four's Bo and Carrie might have been better, I suppose.) And speaking of Ruben, it was nice to see him, but I guess the weight-loss program he supposedly went through a while back didn't really take.

Before we got to the singing part of the show, though, we had to sit through another example of why this show is increasingly difficult to watch. There was an unconsiconable 14 minutes before anyone sang tonight, so we could sit through silly Michael Buffer intros, five minutes of commercials, the judges giving their typical "you got to sing your best" advice before the show, etc. Perhaps they could have used a few of those minutes for singing time? Let them sing a full four minute song for once? Like they'll have to do during their music career? But why would we want to see that? But at least we got to see Luke Perry, so that was nice.
And we did get Andrew Lloyd Webber back, although being incorporated into those ridiculous metaphorical clips with Jim Lampley just made everyone look ridiculous and he didn't get to say that much.

David Cook ("I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For")--So Clive Davis is back and doesn't do David Cook any favors. He gives him one of the most famous songs by the biggest rock band of the last 25 years--a soaring, spiritual song that can't be equaled, let alone improved upon. I suppose David did fine, but all I could think of was that I'd rather hear Bono singing this song. That's not David's fault, but it was just unmemorable. Oh, and Randy? It's not 2007 any more, it's 2008--although I suppose Randy's still saying the same things he said in 2007 (or 2004) to the contestants, so it's understandable he's confused.

David Archuleta ("Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me")--David Archuleta sang his face off on this one. Where was this David Archuleta most of the competition? He showed emotion, he changed his arm movements, he looked like he really wanted to win. He had a messed up note at the very beginning, and the backup singers were way too loud and almost drowned him out at one point. And granted, he got a better song--it's been covered before succesfully by George Michael in a duet with Elton John, and this was one of Clay Aiken's top performances on season two. But Archuleta made me forget about them--he was great.

And did I really see a sign that said "David A is a hot A"?

Cook ("Dream Big")--It's good that a singer was finally able to sing a coronation song that wasn't a typical overwrought ballad, but something that suited his style--or at least he was able to adapt it to his style. Having said that, it still wasn't that great a song. The whole performance sort of sounded like a mediocre Journey song. The vocals were good, but the song was kind of boring.

Archuleta ("In This Moment")--It wasn't as good as the first performance, but it was still very good. The song fit him very well, and yet it was different enough from his typical song that it didn't feel like we had heard it before. As Simon alluded to, the lyrics fit the night very well (something I usually think Simon is giving way too much credence, but for some reason the lyrics stuck out tonight). Archuleta wins round two.

Cook ("The World I Know")--I liked David Cook on the show this year, but I have a feeling I won't like whatever album he records because I don't really care for his taste in music. Our Lady Peace, Switchfoot, and tonight Collective Soul--all these bands have plenty of fans but I'm not one of them. This Collective Soul song isn't bad, I guess, and I thought David Cook gave a nice, emotional, restrained performance of it. But it didn't make me leap out of my seat and say "That guy's the American Idol!" In fact, the whole night I felt like David Cook, from his song choices to his performances, never really had that "lay it on the floor" moment that you really need to win Idol, particulaly when the other guy is singing his butt off.
As for Simon's comments about how David should have sung "Hello" or "Billie Jean," I understand what he's saying and he's probably right, but I give David points for not doing a repeat of something he'd already done in the competition--something I hate.

Archuleta ("Imagine")--But if are you going to repeat something, repeat something we haven't heard in months and do it better than you did the first time. And that's what David Archuleta did. Another fabulous performance I loved from a guy I wasn't even looking forward to listening to earlier today.

OK, before I get to my pick, two theories on what's wrong with Idol. First is something that's partly out of the show's control: It's simply gotten too big. A portion of this is the fault of the show, and its apparent refusal to turn down any opportunity to incorporate advertising into the show--so that ads for ITunes recordings of the songs sometime seem more important than the singers performing the songs on the show. But part of it is due to our insane media culture these days, which beats everything good--and bad--into the ground with such force that you quickly tire of it. I started watching American Idol because it was the fun little show that could--a show produced for about 100 bucks that first summer that happened to have a great concept, good chemistry between the judges and Kelly Clarkson. And for those first few years, all the so-called experts would say that Idol wouldn't remain popular when the season started and it would just become more and more popular each year as more and more people discovered it. They realized it was a great way to put aside the problems and troubles in your own life--and forget about the sometimes upsetting news headlines--for a couple hours a week and just enjoy yourself with a entertaining television show. But sometimes a couple years ago, American Idol somehow became the news headlines. You can barely turn on the TV, check the Internet, pick up a magazine without seeing obsessive discussion of Idol. The crush of attention is just oppressive, and drained the fun out of the show.

My other theory--the last two years may have had some talented singers, but none of them had either of the qualities that helped to make Idol exciting in its first five years. All of those seasons had singers who either were giving people something different than what they were getting from the music industry at the time, or, to quote Simon talking about Clay Aiken, didn't "look like a pop star but you can sing."
In season one, while she's become more of a rock/pop artist, Kelly Clarkson came to prominence being a white woman singing soul songs, a niche that wasn't being filled by anyone else at the time in the music biz--although now we have Amy Winehouse, Joss Stone and Duffy doing the same kind of thing (and in the case of the first and perhaps the third, doing it better.) In season two, both Ruben and Clay, and even Kimberly Locke, didn't look like pop stars. In season three, it's hard to describe Fantasia, but she was certainly different. Carrie Underwood was a pretty typical country artist in season four, but Bo Bice was giving us true southern rock--something which hasn't been on the charts since the Black Crowes were selling records in the early 1998s. And in season five, Taylor Hicks was certainly different from what the music industry is providing, and Elliot Yamin didn't look like a pop start. But last year, Jordin was a pretty typical pop singer, and LaKisha and Melinda were typical belters. As for Blake, you could make an argument he was different, but he was really just a modern rock singer with a boom box gimmick--not something anyone was necessarily clamoring for. And this season no one was particularly unique--except for the stoner thing Jason Castro was doing and I'm not sure there's a market for singers who forget the words. Brooke is a pretty typical female singer-songwriter, Archuleta is a teen-type pop artist, Cook is a rock singer,and Syesha is a belter. If Michael Johns had sung more blues songs instead of rock songs, he might have inherited this mantle, but he really only did it once and then went back to rock and got eliminated. Does this make any sense? Leave a comment with your opinion.

I'll stop rambling now and give you my prediction. David Archuleta will be the next American Idol.

Fingerhut out.

Have Paula, Ryan and Randy really never heard the word humdinger?

2008-05-14T22:48:00.003-04:00

Sure, some of Simon's expressions are occasionally a little odd or cryptic, but the word "humdinger"? I'm familar with that word, Paula. You're the one that sounded pretty dumb questioning it.

I guess this long disquistion on the word "humdinger" is just a way to avoid getting to the show because I really don't have much to say. I'm glad we got the best final two we could have expected, and the show wasn't even that bad tonight because the "going home" clips are always enjoyable. There's still something special about watching someone realize that in just a couple months, they've become pretty famous--even though a year from now most of those people won't be interested anymore.

Finally, I've read a bunch of articles in the last couple weeks providing ways to fix American Idol, in the wake of its big ratings decline. For instance, in Entertainment Weekly this week, one of their critics gave seven ways to fix the show. The first, tone down the product placement, is an excellent one, but one we probably won't be seeing (and to be fair, Idol has always been kind of a leader in product placement. Didn't they have that Coke room by the second season?) Then there's the idea that's really good but completely irrelevant: Stop the medleys at the beginning of the results show. I agree they're bad, but I can't imagine anyone is out there going, "If they just get rid of that two minute medley on Wednesday's show, I'll watch the show again." And then there's two ideas that I don't think will help. First, he suggests replacing Randy and Paula as judges. Yes, they can sometimes be dead wood, but getting rid of them would be altering the entire spirit of the show. Talking about Paula's strange behavior and making fun of Randy's vocabulary is as integral to the show as people singing. Plus, you couldn't have three really critical judges--the show would be too mean. Just make Simon the first judge to give his remarks and that will shake up the show, as it did for an episode a few seasons ago.

Then, the writer, Mark Harris, mentions something that Simon has also suggested: Getting more current, fresher mentors. This isn't a bad idea, I'm just not sure how much difference it would make. Wasn't one of the most memorable episodes of the show season two's Neil Sedaka night? Neil Diamond night could have been pretty cool, if the singers had sung well. Wasn't Gwen Stefani night pretty weak? And if we have hip-hop night with Kanye West, is that really going to work for some of the singers--or for a good chunk of the audience? Does anyone really want to see a Nickelback night?

The simple answer for improving the show is getting better contestants. I'm not totally sure how to do that, but I'll try to have some thoughts next week. Fingerhut out.

The fix is in (although I can't really blame them)

2008-05-13T22:30:00.004-04:00

So why did they have so much trouble fitting in 10 songs and judges' comments two weeks ago, but tonight's nine songs with judges' comments seemed like no problem--and was filled with plenty of breezy conversation before about why a judge or a singer picked a particular song? I don't know, but thinking about a subject like that, or whether the producers could have made it any more obvious tonight that they don't want Syesha in the final, is a lot more interesting than any of the performances were tonight. Nothing terrible--although my sister tells me that if I knew that Chris Brown song, Archuleta's performance would have been pretty bad--but nothing memorable or special, even if it is the "CLOSEST RACE THE SHOW HAS EVER SEEN" according to Ryan. I'm not sure I believe that--weren't Ruben and Clay separated by less than one percent of the vote? (Yeah, yeah, maybe this is the tightest three-way race ever....)

The show began tonight with a glimpse of celebrities in the audience which included someone that appeared to be Lloyd from "Entourage." Yeah, he's funny on the show, but he qualifies as a celebrity in the Idol audience now? This season really is driving people away.

So tonight is the judges' choice show (my co-worker Barbara's favorite week). In past years, it has also included a choice by Clive Davis, along with a contestants' choice, but once again Clive Davis is missing and the arrogant idiots that produce the show get a choice. But I'll deal with that later.

David Archuleta ("And So It Goes")--Sort of a random song choice by Paula--an OK song, I guess, but probably not in the top 15 or 20 of good Billy Joel songs and I don't think I've heard it in more than a decade. And I actually thought it was really good, as good as Archuleta has been since early in the competition--although the long a capella made me think he was going to go all Bo Bice, final three a capella performance on me. Why was David so good? I'm going to speculate, with little evidence, that it was because of the absence of David's dad from preparations this week. If you didn't hear, David's reportedly overbearing stage dad was banned from backstage and being with his son during rehearsals, etc., not because he was obnoxious but because he urged David to add a line from Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls" to his performance of "Stand By Me" last week, since the Kingston song samples "Stand By Me." I forgot to mention it in my blog last week, but I kind of liked that--it made David seem more hip to current music than he had seemed all year, but Idol didn't like it because they had to unexpectedly pay extra for the right to that song. Yeah, it's a shame that they only made $9.9 million instead of $10 million last week. Anyway, what I liked about David's song was that--despite Simon's statement that it was predictable--it really wasn't. It didn't have the same vocal runs in the same places that so many of his songs had the last few weeks. He just sang the melody for the most part and it was good.

Syesha "MLK" Mercado ("If I Ain't Got You")--I have to agree with Simon that it wasn't a real good choice, since it's a well known song with a lot of vocal runs that Syesha isn't going to sing better than Alicia Keys did. Syesha did a good job, but it was the typical Syesha performance--vocally solid, but with nothing exciting that made it unique or drew me in emotionally.

David Cook ("First Time I Ever Saw Your Face")--It was a strange choice by Simon--giving a song sung by a legendary female singer to a male--but I agree with him that I'd rather see the singers challenged with a curveball than thrown a fastball down the middle. I didn't like the high-pitched stuff early in the song, but did like the high notes at the end. Overall, good but not great.

David Archuleta ("With You")--I'm either too old or not hip enough to know much of Chris Brown's work (although I am familiar with his bad acting on "The O.C." a couple years ago), so I don't know how this compares to the original. What I do know is that I was glad David tried a young, fresh song like this, but he looked very uncomfortable doing it, especially in the first half of the song before he settled down a little.

Syesha "John Lewis" Mercado ("Fever")--I have no idea why Syesha picked this song. I suppose she thought it would be sexy, but her performance wasn't. It's such an old song, and has been covered by so many people, it's almost like a cliche. And Syesha did absolutely nothing new with it. I'm falling asleep just remembering it.

David Cook ("Dare You to Move")--David seems to be a devotee of "lack of melody rock," which I don't really care for all that much and will be the reason I don't think I'll be all that interested in his album. But you never know. As for this performance, it was predictable and boring, if fine vocally.

So now we get to the producers' choices, where Nigel Lythgoe and his gang of evil dummies take over. Considering that the NBA is the only thing that brings out more conspiracy theories these days than American Idol, having the producers choose a song means they're just asking for criticism. Placing producers' choice last on the show--so it is the final impression the viewers receive--raises even more questions. And then when they pick such an unknown, melody-free song for the singer they'd rather not have one of the final two (Syesha, because a David-David final would be much more interesting), they might as well just tell us who to vote for. It would be less subtle.

David Archuleta ("Longer")--Nigel and the gang aren't interested in challenging anybody. They gave David the most treacly ballad they could find, and he sang it pretty well.

Syesha "Malcolm X" Mercado ("Hit Me Up")--A song from the movie "Happy Feet"? Really? I suppose the producers "thought" this song would show Syesha's "personality," but why, at this point in the competition, would you give any contestant a song with virtually no melody and hardly any lyrics, for that matter? Syesha did what she could with it, but there really wasn't anything to do with it.

David Cook ("I Don't Want to Miss A Thing")--So they gave the other David a treacly ballad, but done by a rock band, and David gives a good performance but doesn't break any new ground. I was most amazed that Simon called this "one of the greatest songs of all time." What? I know the writer, Diane Warren, was in the audience, but really Simon? That's not even one of the best Aerosmith songs of all time. This show is apparently driving everyone crazy.

Syesha is out tomorrow night, and we'll be a day closer to the end of the most boring Idol season ever. Hallelujah. Fingerhut out.

Have you ever seen someone so happy to go home on American Idol?

2008-05-07T23:42:00.003-04:00

Wow, I think Jason Castro would have cried if he had to stay another week. But he did give us one of the classic quotes of all time: "There were three songs next week. I don't know what I would have done." How exactly is this guy going to handle the tour? Other than Jason's very rabid and excited fans, I think everyone was happy with this elimination.

I don't have much else to say--I didn't care for that Maroon 5 song, but I enjoyed Bo Bice and he probably showed more energy and charisma than anyone on the Idol stage has the last couple weeks. And I can't even remember what happened for the first half-hour of the show, except for that "visit" to that "Love" show in Vegas. Don't we have enough commercials on this show without making five minutes of the actual show into one?

As for some of your comments: I'll take everyone's word for it that Simon was referring to the similarity between the hair of Jason and Bob Marley. But, Amy, I don't think I'm incorrect about Syesha at all. She compared her situation to the civil rights movement twice, and then she sort of did it again tonight when she talked about how the song related to the present day and possibly having a black or female president--and then also how it related to her situation. And many others heard the same thing. I'm not saying this is a reason to vote against Syesha. Her generally mediocre singing is a much better one.

This show won't be going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

2008-05-06T21:35:00.003-04:00

Remember when this show used to be entertaining, even if the singing wasn't that great? I'm trying to, after once again watching a lackluster hour of American Idol. Yeah, it wasn't as badly produced as it was last week (any worse would be impossible), but the singing was once again mediocre and unexciting, even if they were singing some legendary songs. This season can't end soon enough.

David Cook ("Hungry Like the Wolf")-- I'm presuming that this song is considered one of the 500 most influential rock songs of all time as much, if not more, for its video than the song itself. It was one of the first music videos I ever saw--since in Montgomery County, Maryland we weren't wired for cable until I went to college and this video was shown early on the first ever broadcast of NBC's "Friday Night Videos" in 1983, I think. I believe it was the winner, over David Bowie's "Let's Dance," in the first phone-in vote. Ok, sorry for the flashback. I guess I was just delaying because I really don't know what to say about this performance except that it was kind of blah and boring. David has a really good voice, but this isn't a song that shows that off because it really doesn't go anywhere special vocally. And what was all that about Paula and David giving her an appetite? That was sort of disturbing and perhaps inappropriate.

Syesha Mercado ("Proud Mary")--Syesha has stepped it up in the last few weeks, but I didn't think this was anything special at all. It wasn't bad, it was just perfunctory. She sang it OK, but just like in the past, it just didn't draw me in. I was shocked when Paula used the the word "magnetic" to describe her performance, but actually happy, since it gave me the word to describe what was missing. The performance just didn't have any magnetism. Those dance steps she did during the tempo change summed it up--she did the right thing, but she looked totally unnatural, like she was thinking about it the whole time so she would do it correctly. It was done correctly, but it was anything but magnetic.

Jason Castro ("I Shot the Sherriff")--At least you can say that Jason looked like he was trying on this song, unlike that "September Morn" mess last week. It wasn't all that good, but I take exception to Simon's statement that the "only similarity" between Jason now and Jason earlier in the competition is "the hair." No, Jason is pretty much doing the same thing he was doing back in March, but his act got sort of tired. Other than "Hallelujah," he's never done any heavy lifting in the vocal department. As for Jason Castro singing Bob Marley, well, that joke is just too obvious to even bother doing.

David Archuleta ("Stand By Me")--For the commenter--I believe it was "Cookie"--who believes that David is taking some sort of medication, I think you might be on to something. Whenever I watch him stand there waiting for the judges' comments, it looks like he's being held hostage. Something's not quite right. And it's probably his crazy father, judging by the article in Entertainment Weekly this week about song selection before the Neil Diamond show. While David was rehearsing "America," he was saying stuff to the musical director like "the beginning needs to have a U2 vibe" (no, I don't know what he was talking about) and "There's too many 'Today's." The reporter did say, though, that he occasionally compliments his son, and then had David saying "My dad is like my translator" and "I have issues explaining what I want." It also said that David eliminates any song on the song list with "inappropriate lyrics" and that he doesn't want to sing anything about "partying all night with a woman." Make of that what you will, but it all comes off a little weird in my book. As for the song, does anyone above the age of about 20 want to see David Archuleta win American Idol? Especially if he's never going to sing any songs about "partying all night with a woman"? Actually, the reason I don't want to see David Archuleta win American Idol is because while he's a perfectly solid singer, every single song is exactly the same thing, no matter the song. You could see it tonight--in both his first and second song, he does a vocal run and goes for a higher note a few lines in, and then holds a note at the same point in the chorus each time. Am I crazy, or is there like a template that he fits every song into each week? Yeah, Randy keeps yelling "that was hot." If I was there, I'd yell, "That was ... the same!"

David Cook ("Baba O'Reily")--When David said he'd be singing this song, I thought, "Hmm, this could be interesting." And it was better than his first song, but I still thought it was a disappointment. Part of the problem was that the song is just too long to fit into the 90 seconds or so that you have on Idol to sing. Part of the song is the build to the "teenage wasteland" part of the song, and that pretty much got chopped out of the song. And so we saw him sing a decent section of the first verse, and then repeat the words "teenage wasteland" about ten times and that was pretty much it. Three years ago, Constantine was somehow able to fit Bohemian Rhapsody into a minute and a half and do it justice. David wasn't able to do that tonight. And he didn't even do a Roger Daltrey microphone twirl either. (By the way, I can't recommend highly enough the Youtube video I just watched of The Who performing this song live from sometime in the 1970s. I challenge you to not get out of your chair at some point during the song and pump your fist. And it's not completely fair, but it will make you realize how unimpressive David Cook's performance was.)

I promised a few weeks ago I'd tell my "You Got a Friend" story if people wanted to hear it, and I think I got a request or two. I'm reminded of it tonight, for reasons you'll soon realize. It was senior year in high school, and a meeting of the entire senior class was called. One of the topics: Picking our senior class song. The officers had selected three finalists: a song I can't remember but hardly anyone had heard of, "I've Had the Time of My Life" from "Dirty Dancing," and "You've Got A Friend." At the announcement of these choices, particularly the "Dirty Dancing" song, a riot nearly broke out before the class president said, "If you don't like the choices, you can nominate another one... but nothing negative like Teenage Wasteland. Someone then yelled out, "It's called 'Baba O'Reily." Anyway, I always thought that was funny, and "You've Got a Friend" was the class song because no guy was going to vote for a song from "Dirty Dancing."

Syesha Mercado ("A Change is Gonna Come")--I had a hard time paying attention to Syesha's song after Syesha compared her situation on American Idol to the civil rights movement. Huh? She even brought it up again while she was crying and I still don't understand the connection. But I guess Syesha thinks very highly of herself. Wow--"The civil rights movement ... was a pivotal time in history" and "this is a pivotal time in my life." What I did pay attention to I didn't particularly care for. She oversung the song. Sam Cooke, as Randy mentioned, didn't need to hold the final note of the song for 15 seconds, and Syesha didn't need to either. She made the song her own, but it wasn't a song I wanted to hear. As for that crying jag, I have no idea what was going on--but I guess if you think about yourself as akin to the civil rights movement, then the praise she garnered for her performance must have made her feel like she had given her "I have a dream" speech.

Jason Castro ("Mr. Tambourine Man")--What more is there to say? Pretty much like the last song he did, except it was probably a little better vocally but cancelled out by that botched lyric. Now if he had started over, would the judges have praied him?
As for "It didn't blow us away, but you blow us away"--even Paula couldn't come up with a decent compliment, huh?

David Archuleta ("Love Me Tender")--David Archuleta finally sings a love song, and it sounds just like every other song. Probably the best performance of the night objectively, but American Idol isn't about being objective. So it annoyed me, for the reasons outlined above.

Who's going home? I hope it's Jason Castro, but he's got his fans out there--when EW printed a quote from its story on its Website in which Jason basically said that he was ready to go home, an amazing number of people (more than two) left angry comments accusing the magazine of making the quote up. Kind of scary. But I still think he'll go home. Fingerhut out.

The Washington Post still doesn't cover hockey

2008-05-04T23:19:00.004-04:00

For two Saturdays in a row, the Washington Post's "Free for All" letters section has carried missives complaining of the Washington Post's poor coverage of the Stanley Cup playoffs since the Washington Capitals were eliminated in the first round. It was quite fitting that a letter appeared this past Saturday, because that was the day that the Post's hockey coverage reached an unbelievable nadir that will likely be impossible to surpass. I picked up Saturday's sports section, and wasn't surprised that it didn't have the results from the Friday night Stars-Sharks game, since it didn't start until 10 p.m. and went into overtime. But I realized I had never seen the final score of Thursday night's Wings-Avalanche game four, and the Post did have a brief article and box score for the Wings-Avs under a headline that said "Thursday's game." Amazingly, although the last time I checked that game on Thursday night, it had been 7-1 Detroit, the Post had a summary and box score that had the Wings winning 4-3. What a crazy third period that must have been, huh? No, actually the final score of game four was listed in the agate type as 8-2. The Post, under the headline of "Thurday's game," had actually printed a few paragraphs and the box score from Tuesday's game three. Yes, the Washington Post printed the box score from a game that had occurred four days before.

Now I work at a newspaper, and I know that at deadline mistakes honest mistakes can be made (although you'd like to think there'd be someone who was following hockey enough in the Post newsroom to catch this one). But even if the mistake was just the case of hitting the wrong button on the computer, it sure is a fitting symbol of the Post's coverage of the NHL since the Capitals were eliminated from the playoffs. I wrote a blog post back in January about how while the Post does a good job of covering the Caps, the newspaper has essentially given up on covering the league as a whole. The outdoor game on New Year's Day, which got lots of coverage in just about every major sports outlet, got a photo and a few sentences in the Post. But after the Caps's great run at the end of the season, and the remarkable interest it generated, the Post has apparently judged that there will be no greater interest in hockey now than there was in last year's hockey postseason, when it also got no staff coverage.

In fact, I think this year the coverage is actually worse. At least three times in the past week or so, I leafed through the sports section looking for the hockey box scores and they were so buried I didn't even see them the first time through. One time they were nestled under the girls high school lacrosse results, and today the 10 sentences and box score on the clinching game in the Flyers-Habs series was so buried in the bottom right corner of the final page of the sports section that I had to point it out to my dad--who had assumed the Post just didn't print anything on the game.

One might think that with this year's Eastern Conference finals matching two teams that are probably, historically, the Caps' biggest rivals--the Penguins and Flyers--there might be some interest in Washington in the series. But don't expect any coverage beyond those wire service articles in the Post. According to a posting by Caps beat writer Tarik El-Bashir on his blog (in answer to a question I posted), the paper apparently needs to save its hockey budget to cover the draft and awards ceremony, and thus only if the finals "feature a big market matchup, or some other juicy storyline, my editors may decide to dig deep. But that's not my call."

I'm glad to hear that El-Bashir will be at the draft and awards ceremony, but amazed that the paper's sports section--which, judging from the attention it gives to events like the Olympics and the way some of its columnists opine more on national issues than local teams, obviously considers itself a player in the national scene-- is skipping the NHL playoffs. (They didn't even print previews of the second round series, after taking almost a whole page with a preview of the first round.) So why absolutely no interest in a national sports league that by all accounts (TV ratings, buzz, hugely increased interest in the local team, column on the NHL by ESPN Sports Guy Bill Simmons, even) is on an upswing? I have no idea. (Even the Washington Times had a staff-written article on Jaromir Jagr the other day. Hey, there's another local angle that's now gone.) But they're begging me to go elsewhere to read about the NHL playoffs. I guess I will.

More on this issue coming up in another post.

The arrogance of American Idol

2008-04-30T23:28:00.003-04:00

I thought the biggest scandal of American Idol on Tuesday night was the horrible decision to eliminate the judges from the first half of the show. But for some--including probably the most influential American Idol chronicler, Michael Slezak of Entertainment Weekly--it was Paula's gaffe in talking about Jason Castro's second song before he had sung it, and whether this showed that the judges are either actually critiquing the dress rehearsals instead of the live performances, or the judges' comments are scripted in advance.

Amazingly, even though this was a major topic of discussion today throughout the country--it was the featured story on Yahoo for a good portion of the day--the only reference to it in the interminable one-hour show tonight was Ryan obliquely referring to a report on TMZ that Paula had been drinking before the show and that's why she was so confused. So instead of addressing a situation that in some minds, such as Slezak's, threatens to undermine the integrity of the show, Ryan defended Paula as "part of our family" or some such silliness, and moved on with no other comment. Not a good move.

Personally, I don't think this situation undermines the credibility of the show any more than anything else has over the years, because I sort of believe what is a weird, confusing story that Paula and Ryan told on his radio show this morning. I was more amazed by the amateurishness of the way the show works. I think the fact that the show is live is valuable because it adds an element of unpredictability to the show. But seeing Brooke mess up the lyrics to a song is unpredictable. What was done Tuesday night is just ridiculous. Apparently, the judges WEREN'T EVEN TOLD they woudln't be critiquing the singers until after the second performance until Ryan told them live on the air Tuesday night. According to Paula, they were so surprised and confuse by this development that they spent much of the first performance talking among themselves about it and asking to get a pen and some paper so they could write notes. (Really, this is what Paula said.) Then, apparently, what threw Paula off was when they were asked to critique at the end of the first performances. She said she had walked in earlier during the dress rehearsal--because she had gotten some family and friends in to that session--and heard Jason Castro singing "September Morn" so she had that in her head and she was so flustered by the change-up that she was thinking about that. (This, of course, contradicts what she said during Tuesday's show and what she apparently told Entertainment Tonight Tuesday night--that she had confused the Cook and Castro notes--but that didn't make any sense anyway, because she said she liked David Cook's performance but she didn't like Jason's "second" performance.) I'm willing to generally believe this explanation, because I watched an episode or two of that "Hey, Paula" reality show about her life, and she seems like a really confused person most of the time.

But the funniest and most satisfying part of the whole story is why they got that critique after the first performance. Apparently Mike Darnell--the head of Fox reality programming and, in effect, AI producer Nigel Lythgoe's boss--was watching the show at home and was, like most viewers, astounded that they skipped the judges for the first half of the show and told Nigel to bring out everyone and have the judges give their opinions before they did their second songs. So at least someone at Fox knows what's going on.

As for Brooke's elimination, it can't be surprising to anyone, and she had been flailing for a couple weeks. Just like Brooke was the first singer to restart a song in Idol history, I think she was the first contestant to actually walk away from her fellow contestants because she was having some sort of emotional breakdown after the song instead of being part of a group hug. Very weird.

As for the rest of the show, the medley wasn't quite as bad as usual, I'm not sure what Natasha Bedingfield was doing there but I like her, Neil Diamond was good but still had absolutely nothing interesting to say to the contestants, and "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Week"? How frightened should we be of this? Fingerhut out.

The beginning of the end for American Idol

2008-04-30T00:51:00.003-04:00

There's been a lot of talk in recent weeks about the ratings decline of American Idol this year. The ratings are down fairly significantly--I believe it's as much as 15-20 percent--but it's still far and away the top-rated show on television. And the fact that its decline hasn't come until the seventh season is also a sign of its strength--most shows don't even make it to their seventh season, and just about every show has peaked in the ratings far before that. (Jerry Seinfeld would probably argue that his show didn't peak until something like the seventh season, but the first three seasons of Seinfeld were one, four and then 13 shows, so that doesn't really count.)

No, tonight it wasn't the ratings that demonstrated to me tonight that American Idol is in an irrevocable free fall. It was tonight's debacle of the show. It wasn't just the fact that we had ten performances tonight and not one of them was memorable. (I can't imagine that there was any performance that people will want to watch again on Youtube this morning.) It wasn't just the fact that one of the judges was so bored that she didn't know how many times each contestant had sung (and normally we'd chalk it up to Paula being drunk, but she seemed fairly with it, for her, in most of her criticism.) No, it was mostly because after seven seasons of this show, the producers still don't seem to understand why we watch the show.

HOW COULD THEY SKIP THE JUDGES FOR THE FIRST ROUND OF SINGING? (Sorry for the shouting, but it was necessary.) Look, we all may get tired of Paula's strange critiques, Randy's eight-word vocabulary and Simon getting interrupted. But it's one of the two main elements of the show. I remember the first night I watched this show back in the summer of 2002. I was sitting on the couch and my friend John, then my roommate, walked in and started unloading some groceries. After watching a couple minutes from the kitchen, he said something like, "So this is how this show works--someone sings and then they judge him?" I said yes, and he said something like, "Oh, this is fun." That's the concept of the show. How can you relegate the judges to taking notes and popping up 25 minutes in? They did this once before, on the first season finale, and it was very weird and never done again--until tonight's mess. If AI producers don't even understand how their own show works in season seven, they deserve to lose the golden goose. There are certainly improvements that could be made to Idol, but this new format tonight wasn't one of them.

And I have no idea why this was done. They've had 10 singers in a one hour live show before--they had to rush a little but they got it in. (This year, though, they extended that show to a hour and a half.) Even more relevant, they've had five singers sing two songs each in an hour (shorter than 10 singers, because you only need a taped intro for the first song of the two, as they did tonight), along with judging, in multiple seasons. They didn't do it last year because they didn't cut someone during "Idol Gives Back" and thus had six singers for two weeks in a row. But in season five they did, season four they did and season three they did (although that year they had the singers do their songs back-to-back, which was kind of weird but would have been better than tonight's solution.) I could look up season two on the Internet, but that was so long ago. Anyway, what allowed them to do it in past years but not this year? Was it just too many commercials they didn't want to pass up? In such a rushed show, did they really need those chats Ryan has with the contestants simply for the purpose of putting Coca-Cola's name on the screen? OK, I think I've made my point.

So I thought Neil Diamond would be a good theme. I wouldn't call myself a huge fan of Neil Diamond, but I've liked him ever since I saw the movie "The Jazz Singer" when I was 10 and then listened to the soundtrack for months afterward.(And come on, who doesn't love the scene when Lawrence Olivier walks into Diamond's apartment, sees he's living with Lucie Arnez and rips his clothes?) There was also the camp I went to one summer in which someone played the song "Sweet Caroline" on the record player multiple times a day. And then I read an article in Rolling Stone when I was in high school arguing that Neil Diamond might be the most underappreciated songwriter of his generation--and when you go back and listen to some of his other songs, he does have some really good ones. But tonight's show actually made me appreciate Neil Diamond more as a vocalist than I expected. He really knows how to put some emotion into his performance and sell a song, something that someone like Jason Castro seems to have no idea about. Having praised Neil enough, though, I must say, especially after ALW last week, he was terrible as a mentor. His big advice is change the words of the song from New York City to Arizona for Brooke? Huh? It might have worked if the next line hadn't mentioned that she was "living between two coasts," which Arizona isn't.)

Anyway, let's get to the lackluter performances, and I'll judge after every song, but after my rant, I'll try to be brief.

Jason Castro--(Forever in Blue Jeans) I suppose it was pleasant, but really, really boring. And I'm sure one of Jason's fans will have a sign tomorrow that says "Jason-Forever in Blue Eyes". So we've got that to look forward to.

David Cook ("I'm Alive")--So David Cook is once again going to the Chris Daughtry during Queen week strategy--pick a song by a popular artist that no one has ever heard before. Amazingly, he did it twice. This first one was basically average, nothing special Jason Cook. I would have rather seen him sing that song from Phantom again.

Brooke White ("I'm A Believer")--Strange song selection for Brooke, who excels picking songs that show some authentic emotion. Not sure why she thought a song first sung by the Monkees would suit her. She at least tried to give it her own tiny little fun spin, but it wasn't fun at all.

David Archuleta ("Sweet Caroline")--I don't know what this was, but I hope I never hear it again. Although I've grown to not really like David, I hope he doesn't get kicked off tomorrow--not just because that would mean Jason Castro would be around another week, but because we might have to hear this again. That was "Sweet Caroline" set to David's annoying light-pop arrangement, with a dollop of jazziness thrown in, and I thought the whole thing was just wrong. Anyone else feel the same way? If you just isolated the vocals, they were OK, but the whole performance just didn't work for me.

Syesha Mercado ("Hello Again")--Our first Jazz Singer song! (Unfortunately, no one did "Love on the Rocks." While that wasn't great, I thought Syesha was the best of the first round. She still doesn't put enough emotion or perform interestingly enough to really draw me in to the performance, but she's getting better at it.

Then we had the judges' quick rundown, the less said about, the better. I'm still stunned about Paula thinking Jason Castro had already sung twice, but I guess she was watching an even worse show than I was watching, so I'll take sympathy on her. And the praise of Archuleta by Randy is just mystifying.

Jason (September Morn)--This performance was just so lackadaisical, so enervated (is that the right word?) you have to wonder if Jason even cares anymore. There's not much more to say.

David Cook ("All I Really Need Is You")--The judges were correct that this was much better than his first song. But it still wasn't as good as about eight other performances he's had this year. Simon is correct, that song did sound like it could be a hit today--but that still doesn't mean it would deserve to be a hit. Maybe I'm just not in love with that style of rock music, but I still was left wanting something more.

Brooke White ("I Am ... I Said")--The verse was OK, and then the chorus was where Brooke finally seemed comfortable again, showing that authentic feeling and emotion. Unfortunately it was like 20 seconds long and the song ended before she could get to the chorus again. Oh well. But it might have been good enough to vault her over Castro in the results.

David Archuleta ("America")--Not the desecration that his first performance was, but what was up with that weird ending of the song? He "Archuleta-ed" it up some, but it was still OK.

Syesha Mercado ("Thank the Lord for the Nightime")--This performance kind of summed up Syesha's time on the show--just good enough for you to say, "You know, she's got some talent," and just off enough to say, "But she's not good enough to actually be a recording star." This was good because it allowed Syesha again to show her personality, but that personality isn't quite appealing enough. As for Paula saying she's a combination of Minnie Riperton and Corrine Baily Rae, maybe she was drunk.

On the night, I'd probably say Syesha was overall the best of the night, and that should save her from the bottom two, despite what Simon said. I think Brooke and Jason will be in the bottom two, and let's go with Jason as the one eliminated. Fingerhut out!

Carly Smithson, not quite a superstar

2008-04-24T00:03:00.004-04:00

Six weeks ago, I thought Carly had a shot to win. By the last couple weeks, it was clear that wasn't going to happen. And yet I like her a lot more than I did six weeks ago. I think it had a lot to do with the huge amount of screen time and over-the-top praise from the judges that Carly got in the audition and Hollywood phase of the show. She was never as good as Simon and Randy and Paula told us she was, and the constant crying in her audition clips was tiring and annoying. And I think that came back to haunt Carly. She turned out to be a pretty good singer, but she was never as good as Simon had claimed she was (or Paula or Randy, for that matter.) And the crying she did the first few weeks about how tough the music business was (despite the fact that she once did put out an album on a major record label) and her general nervousness most of the time masked what eventually seemed like a pretty fun personality in the last few weeks. All that, combined with the fact that she looked like she was in severe pain when singing a lot of the time, combined to make Carly not particularly popular. And the husband with the face tattoo weirded people out. Anyway, I'd rather hear her sing Neil Diamond songs than Syesha, Brooke or Jason, and Archuleta too, but I guess we won't have that opportunity. (For instance, Carly singing "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" might have worked, but Syesha singing the same song? Not looking forward to it. And you know she's picking it. Just like Archuleta will be doing at least one of Heartlight and America. A couple other guesses: I'm feeling Jason Castro for I'm a Believer, David Cook might try to do something with Red, Red Wine, and Girl You'll Be A Woman Soon is a definite possiblity, and Brooke--I have no idea. Play Me? I do hope someone does Love on the Rocks.)

As for the rest of the show, to use a Simon term, it was a mixed bag. The group sing was, as usual, terrible. I liked that Leona Lewis song the first 800 times I heard it, but I think I'm already getting sick of it. It was nice to see Clay and Tamyra (still the most shocking elimination in Idol history), and actually I would have rather spent a little more time with them and less timne hearing both of the final two sing. And Andrew Lloyd Webber was just as entertaining tonight. Fingerhut out.

If I make a mistake in the first paragraph of this blog, I won't be starting over

2008-04-23T00:14:00.003-04:00

After watching the Capitals lose Game 7 in overtime, then pretty much sitting on the couch in a daze for the next hour, I didn't start watching Idol until 11 tonight--so if this blog is incoherent, that's my explanation. I might have had trouble making it through the show, if not for the fact that we probably had the best mentor ever tonight. Andrew Lloyd Webber was great--knew the contestants, had actual advice to offer them, was funny and knew what he was talking about. The other thing that was good about tonight is that, like they had read my rant last week, almost everyone stepped out of their box tonight and sang a Broadway song like they were performing on Broadway--and didn't do the same old performance they always do (except for Archuleta, sort of.)

Syesha Mercado ("One Rock and Roll Too Many")--I'd never heard this song before, but I looked it up and it's from that show on roller skates, "Starlight Express." And even though I didn't know it, unlike last week, it was a great choice for Syesha. I don't understand why she said that she hadn't been able to pick a song that showed personality previously in the competition, but if it took Broadway week to make her do that, it's about time. It was fun, sung well and didn't bore me at all (that sounds like a backhanded compliment, but it's not meant like that--I'm just trying to contrast her performance tonight with the boredom she usually induces in me.)

Jason Castro ("Memory")--Although the judges didn't want to, I'm going to give Jason credit simply for not using a guitar and singing a song that required him to stretch. But it was no "Hallelujah." The vocal was rough at times, particularly the low notes on the bridge. But, hey, Jason did give us the funniest line from this season's Idol:" "I didn't even know a cat was singing it." Funny, but of course a little frightening in the lack of musical knowledge Jason has. Second funniest line from Webber: "I think he understood it."

So they showed David Duchovny, Allison Janney, Courtney Cox, and other celebrities in the audience tonight--are regular people even attending the show anymore?

Brooke White ("You Must Love Me")--I like Brooke, but sorry, once she started the song over--for the second time this year--she ruined the whole performance for me. I've watched this show for seven years and never seen anyone else do that. I agree with Paula that she's got to be able to recover, or cover up, or find some way to move on without starting the song over. As for the actual song, it was heartfelt, but when she got to the heart of the song Brooke's vocal limitations were really showing through. She wasn't even attempting to hit some of those notes.

David Archuleta ("Think of Me")--I've never seen "Phantom of the Opera"--although I have heard "Music of the Night"--so I don't know what David did to this song. But after either Webber or one of the judges said it, I realized that Archuleta's song did sound pretty pop song-ish for a Broadway song (or at least for a Broadway song that didn't come from Mama Mia or that Billy Joel show). So he really didn't come out of his box all that much. But I must say that it was the most I've enjoyed David Archuleta in weeks. It was just a really nice performance. But that group of girls that came up and hugged him before the song looked like something out of that polygimist compound--very creepy.

Carly Smithson ("Jesus Christ Superstar")--Wow, loved that Andrew Lloyd Webber actually told Carly she picked the wrong song. That's good mentoring, and he was correct too. Carly should be singing big songs. And she did a pretty good job tonight. Not great, because as Simon said, she was shouting some on the choruses, but enjoyable. And the outfit was hot.

David Cook ("Music of the Night")--Instead of taking the Elvis-like Pharoah's dream song in "Joseph" or something, David just decided to sing a famous Andrew Lloyd Webber song and I'm glad he did. Because he was really good. Yeah, Simon, I know, he's not going to record an album of Broadway songs, so you'd rather see him do the thing that's going to sell lots of records for you and Clive Davis and Simon Fuller, but I enjoyed seeing his versatility. And by the judges' comments tonight, it seems obvious they're setting us up for the 2 Davids finale. Can it be stopped? Unlikely. Should it be stopped? I'm still deciding.

Bottom three is tough, but I'll go with Brooke, Jason and Carly, with Brooke going home because I think other people will be turned off by the same thing I was.

And thanks Caps, for a great season.

Fingerhut out.

Why do they have to put us through this silliness every year?

2008-04-16T22:35:00.002-04:00

Reason No. 816 why I hate the American Idol producers: The annual "Let's make one of the contestants 'choose' which group is the bottom three" charade. Considering that I believe this is the third consecutive time that the contestant they chose stood in the middle and refused to play their silly game, I'm not sure why they continue to do this. I guess the memory of the confused, pained George Huff trying to figure out where to go the first time they pulled this stunt must really warm Nigel's very cold heart. And what was up with Ryan switching David Cook and Syesha before making Archuleta pick--did he mess up, was that some sort of weird fakeout for us at home, or was that something to force Archuleta to think on his feet? Very weird.

Anyway, it was nice to see Elliott Yamin return and pay tribute to his mom. I thought Mariah's song wasn't all that great--until perhaps the end when she started to belt a little bit (which makes her 0 for 2 for this album in my book, since I don't think "Touch My Body" was all that hot either.) As for Kristy Lee Cook, there's not much to say. She was steadily improving, but she was basically living on borrowed time for the last month. Why she went this week instead of after that horrible "Eight Days A Week" performance is just one of those American Idol myteries.

Oh, and that was a great question that woman on the phone asked Simon--what is the difference between a karoke performance and a theme park performance? But I guess that will be another of those AI mysteries....Fingerhut out

Idol's got me feeling some emotions--but they're not necessarily good ones

2008-04-15T23:01:00.005-04:00

So I'm about 20 minutes into watching the show on DVR tonight, and my friend John text messaged me to say "I'm so ... bored of all these contestants." And after reading that message, I immediately realized what the problem is with this season of American Idol. Almost everyone is kind of boring, because they do the same thing every week. American Idol used to be about singers having to do a song with a new style pretty much every week. But after the success of Chris Daughtry in season five and Blake Lewis in season six trying whenever possible to tailor the songs to their style, almost everyone is remaking every song in their style. And after a few weeks of it being sort of interesting and creative, it's now just boring. Every week we can expect Brooke to do a piano ballad, and Jason Castro to sing some guitar-strumming coffehouse type of song, and David Cook will do a modern rock tune, and Kristy Lee Cook do her country thing and David Archuleta sing an inspirational song and Syesha sing some song with a big vocal range (OK, Syesha isn't quite the same as the others, but it's still boring.) Whatever you think of Carly, she's a breath of fresh air most weeks--at least she's an old-fashioned Idol contestant who varies her style depending on the theme. Perhaps this whole playing-your-own-instrument thing has gone too far.

Having said all that, tonight's show overall wasn't bad. Mariah seemed like a relatively engaged mentor, and her catalogue is big enough that everyone can find a song that works for them. I do wonder, though, how you have a show featuring the songs of someone with 18 number one hits, and three of the seven singers pick songs that either are completely unknown to the viewing audience (Syesha's song) or were only minor hits (Archuleta and Kristy Lee Cook's). But such are the mysteries of American Idol....

(And speaking of mysteries, to follow up last week's post about "Shout to the Lord," the Idols also sang that song on Wednesday night but substituted the word "Shepherd" for "Jesus." I didn't notice that--because I didn't know the song--but apparently many Christians did and were furious, expressing their anger on the Internet and elsewhere. Whether this led to the producers putting "Jesus" back into the song is an interesting question, but one we probably won't get an answer to if I know the mysterious American Idol producers as well as I believe I do...)

Before I get to the song, by talking about how "surprising" Michael Johns' departure is, isn't Ryan kind of insulting everyone else that's been eliminated? He didn't talk about their "surprising" departure the following week, so I guess they were deemed to be expendable and the producers felt they had gone as far as they could go. That may be true, but it still seems kind of funny.

David Archuleta (When You Believe)--I had no idea what this song was until Randy mentioned it was the Mariah-Whitney duet. Yes, it did win an Academy Award because it was in the movie "Prince of Egypt," but this has to be one of the most disappointing songs in history. When I heard there was a Whitney Houston-Mariah Carey duet, I was expecting something impressive--and instead we got this unexciting song lacking in any good pop hooks. But it's inspirational, so of course David Archuleta sang it. And was he wearing leather pants? And if he was, why? (By the way, did you know that David was born after Mariah Carey's first record was released?) Anyway, I wasn't impressed by this at all. I thought the song seemed too big for him and a time or two he was almost drowned out by the music

Carly Smithson ("Without You")--I really wanted to love this and was expecting Carly to knock it out of the park, but it just wasn't as good as I had hoped. It was still fine, but nothing memorable. And I agree with Simon--it does seem like Carly was nervous and was holding something back. She looks different during her best performances--she's smiling and strutting around. But not tonight.

Syesha Mercado ("Vanishing")--So did Syesha pick this song that I and most of the country had never heard before because, as Paula said, she wouldn't have to be compared to Mariah Carey, or because it allowed her to do a 30 second vocal run or something near the end? I think the latter. This was like all of Syesha's performances: solid, competent, even very good vocals lacking anything unique or any emotional connection that would draw me in. And I agree with Simon--picking a song no one's heard before in a competition where people generally sing songs that everyone has heard before is a minus--because most viewers spend most of the song going "I know Mariah Carey, but I don't think I've ever heard this song. Have I heard this song? No, what is this...?"

Brooke White ("Hero")--So why couldn't Brooke go to her sister's wedding? Does American Idol not let you leave the show to do something like attend one of the most important days of a family member's life? If she misses a day of rehearsal, isn't that her problem if she chooses too? Would the world still turn on its axis if Brooke couldn't make the Ford commercial this week? As for her singing, it was back to Brooke White, piano player, this week, and I actually thought it might have been her best performance since "Let It Be." It was authentic, as Paula likes to say. But she's just not diversified enough or vocally strong enough to win this competition, as pleasant as her piano ballads are.

Kristy Lee Cook ("Forever")--Even though Mariah said not many people know this song, I was surprised to realize I'd heard it a few times before. Even more surprising was seeing Kristy sing it pretty well. While she had a slight twang in her voice, she basically sang it straight and I enjoyed it. Kristy seems to have stuck around long enough to figure out the right songs to sing, and may even be around a few more weeks at this rate.

David Cook ("Always Be My Baby")--OK, I may be tired of him making everything into that emo-style of his, and I may have thought he was getting too big for his britches--but for tonight, David, all is forgiven. That was great, just really cool--especially because it seems like he came up with that arrangement himself. I could have done without the vocal histrionics at the very end, but I still really liked it.

Jason Castro ("I Don't Want to Cry")--It was no David Cook, but that actually wasn't bad either, although I'm now getting bored with the whole Jason Castro vibe at this point. Like Brooke, his limitations are showing.

So who's going home? I really have no idea. I think that Syesha will make the bottom three, and other than it could be one of any number of people, other than David Cook and perhaps Archuleta. Let's say Brooke and Carly also make the bottom three, and Syesha goes home.

Fingerhut out.

The first real contender to go down

2008-04-10T23:05:00.004-04:00

He was still a relative longshot compared to Davids Cook and Archuleta, but I think most people could see a scenario where Michael Johns won this season of American Idol. So it is disappointing to see him go home before Syesha Mercado or Kristy Lee Cook, who I don't think anyone could really see winning the title. But I suppose it shouldn't be that surprising. For all Michael's talent, he just didn't show it off enough. He was my third choice coming into the top 12, but after his "Bohemian Rhapsody" in Hollywood week, the only two times he really stood out were the two weeks before this one--with "We Are the Champions" and then the Dolly Parton song last week. Every other week, he basically did a relatively faithful cover of a classic rock song and was fine but nothing special. And in a year when many of the contestants are taking well known songs and tweaking them (or, more correctly, singing covers that somebody else did that change up well known songs), it just wasn't enough.

In other notes from tonight's show: I wasn't that crazy about the Chris Brown-Jordin Sparks duet, but I did like the whole performance Jordin, in particular, was doing. And Chris Brown had a much better performance in this venue than he did on the O.C. He should stick to singing.

I guess they ran out of time and couldn't show that "I'm A Believer" video on Idol Gives Back. It's a shame they didn't run out of time tonight, too. What a pointless waste of time and effort. The time and money they spent making that would have put to much better use being given to any of the Idol Gives Back charities.

And finally, there's something that bothered me tonight. Why was the Idol gang singing such an overtly religious song tonight. "Shout to the Lord" was, if I heard the title correctly, the song that the Idols sang at the beginning of the show tonight, and I believe at the end of the show last night. The opening lines to the song were "My Jesus, my savior. Lord, there is none like you." If an Idol chose to sing a song like this for inspirational night, that's fine, it's their choice. But for the producers to pick a song for the Idols to sing that excludes all non-Christians in America seems to be an pretty strange choice for a show that has an incredibly diverse audience. I'm not offended, I'm just puzzled and bothered by the choice--did they not realize that Elliot Yamin, for instance, might not have wanted to sing this song? Or that some viewers might have been turned off? Did anyone else notice this?

Taking back my Idol Gives Back rant

2008-04-10T00:15:00.003-04:00

OK, I'm wrong. I've been getting a lot of flak about my whining in regard to "Idol Gives Back," and after watching tonight's show, I'm going to stop complaining. It thankfully didn't have any of the self-congratulation that I had feared (and that we saw in the weeks leading up to the show), but simply had some entertainment mixed in with some stories about those getting help. And even more impressive, instead of just getting celebrities to smile in some music video like last year, they actually had a bunch of celebrities go to visit the people that were being helped.

And after initially being kind of confused at how unfocused the charity efforts seem to be (AIDS in Africa one minute, poor people in the inner city the next, and Katrina victims a half hour later), I started to understand why they were taking in so many different causes. American Idol is a broad-based show, and thus they were trying to capture as many viewers as possible with a cause that may specifically tug at their heartstrings.

I still wish Fox would learn to tell its viewers that a show is going to run 10 minutes longer than scheduled (most of this show, after all, was taped on Sunday, so they must have known), and I hope Miley Cyrus and Billy Crystal are never on stage together again (and after seeing Miley Cyrus perform for the first time, I must say, as a 37-year-old male, I'm kind of confused as to why she's so popular.) But other than that, Idol Gives Back was a good thing.

I was only sort of inspired by Idol

2008-04-08T22:05:00.005-04:00

I could save all of us a lot of time by saying that I agreed with pretty much everything Simon said tonight--but I'll blog anyway. After all, someone has to complain that they've gotten a little carried away with this whole "Idol Gives Back" thing. Not only is it going to be more than two and a half hours long tomorrow night, but they've also got the presidential candidates and the prime minister of Great Britain to record messages for the show. Yeah, I know it's for a good cause, but I like to watch American Idol because it's an hour when I can just watch a singing show and not have to think about Hillary Clinton or John McCain or the problems of the world. Is it so wrong to want to keep it that way? And then there's the story I read today in which Seacrest and the judges all announced that they would be donating their paychecks for Wednesday night to Idol Gives Back. That's very nice, I guess (although I guess that means they did get paid for it last year.) As I said last year, though, what about Nigel, Ken, and the production company that puts Idol on, 19 Entertainment? How much did they donate to all this after asking everyone else to chip in? OK, enough with that sore subject.

Tonight's theme was inspirational songs. After last week's more narrow theme, it was nice to open it up a little this week for a category that was much broader than I had thought. I've heard the song "Dream On" lots of times, but never thought of it as inspirational, nor did I think that of "You've Got A Friend." But there's a first time for everything.

Michael Johns (Dream On)--After giving us one of the best peformances of the competition last week and becoming a contender again with a bluesy, soulful performance, I thought Michael returned to what he had been most of the season--a guy doing a good but not great job of covering well-known rock songs. Midway through tonight's performance, I said to myself, "I'd like to see some originality here" but never really got much. He sang the song fine, it just wasn't particularly special. And for the first of many times, Paula just needed to shut up here. Paula, it's fine you disagree with the other judges. You get your time to give your opinion. When someone else gives an opinion you don't agree with, it's annoying and kind of rude to interrupt them in the middle of it to tell them how wrong they are (especially when their opinion is closer to the truth). It's been seven seasons? Doesn't anyone tell her this, just on the street or something?

Syesha Mercado ("I Believe")--LaKisha did this same song last year (I believe also during Idol Gives Back week), and I wrote the same thing I'm going to write now. Why? Why would you be stupid enough to perform a song that a previous Idol contestant basically immortalized on the very same stage? Fantasia practically lit the stage on fire that night after winning by singing this song. And the judges loved Fantasia as much as any Idol contestant they've ever had. Why would you sing a song in which you're going to be unfavorably compared to the previous singer of the song, no matter what you do? Having said all that, she sang it fairly well--but that's practially irrelevant.

Jason Castro (Somewhere Over the Rainbow)--About 10 seconds into this performance, after realizing that this version of the song is played on some commercial, I just started laughing. Seriously, Jason Castro is now playing the ukelele on stage? It's like he's become a parody of himself. But the judges were correct, he sounded really good.

Kristy Lee Cook (Anyway)--That song was right in Kristy's wheelhouse, and she hit a solid double, if not a triple. That wasn't bad at all. But she can't win--so it's still probably time for her to go.

David Cook (Innocent)--Mediocre song, mediocre performance. I said it a couple weeks ago, but it got much worse tonight: David Cook seems way too into himself. The posing and pointing to the sky in the middle of the song, the "give back" on the hand--maybe take yourself a little less seriously next week, David. And pick a song that allows you to show off your voice--because that one didn't.

Carly Smithson (Show Must Go On)--Probably the one time I didn't agree with Simon tonight. Although I expected it to be better, I didn't think Carly was that bad tonight. Simon, I believe, described her performance as angry, but that's the Carly I like. Instead of the nervous, weird Carly, we got the Carly who has the "I'm going to kick your butt" look and attitude. And each week she gets better looking--while her husband's face tattoo gets more disturbing looking. I hope Simon wasn't correct and she may be in trouble--in fact, that may have been Simon's effort to rally her fan base. I'm still not Carly's biggest fan, but she can sing rings around Kristy Lee Cook--and pretty much every other woman left.

David Archuleta (Angels)--I guess I can understand why David Archuleta had so much trouble picking a song--all he ever sings are inspirational songs, so this pretty much opened it up to just about every song he likes. He was really good vocally, as usual, but I'm still kind of bored by him. And was it just me, or in his posture when he waited to hear the judges remarks and the looks he gave after it was over, was anyone else getting a "I'm tired of this and ready for it to end" vibe from young David? He just seemed to have a beaten-down, slouched air about him. But maybe I'm just projecting my thoughts on him. And the creepiest sign of the night by far was that girl with the "Lick Those Lips!" poster. That's just weird.

Brooke White ("You've Got A Friend")--I like Brooke, but she seems to be hitting a wall. This was a nice, authentic performance like "Let It Be," but just didn't hit the same heights that did and came across, as Simon said, as nice and pleasant but not particularly remarkable.I don't know why she didn't play the piano herself. And the crying after the performance was OK once, but a bit much when it happens more than that. By the way, I've got sort of a funny story involving the song "You've Got A Friend" and high school, if anyone wants to hear it. If enough people leave comments requesting it, I'll tell it in a future blog entry.

Bottom three is going to be Syesha, Kristy and Brooke, and I think Syesha will go home, because she sang early in the show and Kristy did better than usual. But it wouldn't bother me if it went the other way. Remember, the results show this week is on Thursday just to make us suffer. I'll definitely blog about that, but I'm not sure I have the energy to blog Idol Gives Back tomorrow. Fingerhut out.

Is it really already less than a week until Idol Gives Back?

2008-04-02T23:14:00.003-04:00

Before we get to tonight's elimination, I had no idea until seeing a commercial last night that "Idol Gives Back" was next week. Yeah, I know it's for a good cause (although I'm still waiting for Idol production company 19 Entertainment to announce its financial contribution to the effort), but do you realize next week's Wednesday show is going to last 2 and a half hours? They're starting it early, at 7:30 (or, because it's Idol on Wednesday, probably 7:27.) It's going to be a very long night, and they'll probably do what they did last year and not even eliminate anyone because they couldn't do something like that on such a great night, yada, yada, yada. But they did raise more than $70 million for AFrica, so I guess my complaining does sound kind of petty and stupid.

Anyway, the best part of tonight's show--other than the elimination--had to be seeing Bucky Covington and Bo Bice again. And Phil Stacey, too, I guess, although it seems like it's been hardly any time since he left us. In fact, instead of that increasingly dumb phone-in segment, or the typically ugly medley from the Idols (they couldn't even seem to get the mikes to work for it tonight--maybe the mikes were refusing to work in protest), perhaps we could spend a little more time with the former Idols. Bucky's segment was, what, 30 seconds?

Finally, it was good to see the right person go in Ramiele, and I felt no sympathy for her after her crying jag. I'm sure it's sad to leave Idol, but she had to know she was still lucky to be there, didn't she? And her "I want you to feel sorry for me being in the bottom three, so I'll scrunch up my face and look sad" face was really annoying. I think Kristy's "I'm dead meat" attitude is much more appealing, and probably winning her some fans (because her singing certainly isn't). Until next week, Fingerhut out.

Some more excitement needed on Idol

2008-04-02T00:46:00.007-04:00

Maybe it was because I was tired after not getting home from work until 10:00 and then watching postgame hockey coverage before turning on Idol near 11 p.m. Or maybe there were just a bunch of forgettable performances. But whatever the reason, I couldn't really get into Idol tonight. Which may account for what may be shorter blog entry than usual (although once I start writing, I never really know.)

I don't think my lack of excitement had anything to do with Dolly Parton. While I'm traditionally not a fan of "country night," this wasn't a typical country night--since it involved some high-quality songs of one of the top country artists of all time. Maybe it the bad vibe from that really unfunny "April Fool's joke" that Ryan told at the top of the show. Did someone really think that was funny? The American Association of Vocal Coaches or whatever he said?

One other thing before I get to the rundown. To my anonymous commenter on the West Coast who requested that I post after the show airs on the West Coast on Wednesday: I've heard there's some way to set posts to go up automatically at a certain time, but I have no idea how to do that. Perhaps I can save my post and put it up in the morning. Or if I kept the bootee's name out of the headline and first few lines, would that solve the problem?

Brooke White (Jolene)--I really like Brooke White, but if she wants to possibly win this thing, she's going to have to step up her game a little. Her performance was good, but hardly memorable. But it was a lot better than a busker in the subway, Simon. And Brooke, you don't have to answer every judge's critique with a comment or thank you. Just stand there and listen unless they ask you a question.

David Cook (Little Sparrow)--First of all, I don't know what he did with the hair (Is it a piece? Plugs?), but it did look a lot better tonight. You couldn't even tell he had to comb it over. Second, once again the Idol producers slyly gave someone a chance to address a brewing controversy by having him get asked a question by Ryan before his song. Just like Chris Daughtry copped to using someone else's arrangement of "Walk the Line" (Was Live the band?), David admitted that he modeled his "Eleanor Rigby" performance after a cover by a band called Doxology (which had put out a press release taking credit for the arrangement earlier in the week.) Personally, I don't care if singers use someone else's unorthodox arrangement of a popular song--after all, they are singing covers, not original music--as long as the artist who created that unorthodox arrangement is credited on the show. What bothers me more is when the judges call them "brave" for doing it. This whole thing has also given me new appreciation for Blake Lewis, who came up with that whole "You Give Love a Bad Name" thing last year all by himself.

As for David's performance, I was glad to see that he put together his own arrangement (I'll take him at his word) and I thought it was fine, if not spectacular. I was glad to see that he didn't make it into the brooding rock ballad he's done with everything else the last month, but sort of adapted it to his style without seeming to completely revamp it.

Ramiele Malubay (Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?)--I think it's just time for Ramiele to go. There were times I was having trouble heariing her over the music, and she was just kind of boring. Whatever promise she once showed (and her one not bad performance of "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" for some reason has been treated like a combination of Fantasia's performance of "Summertime" and Whitney Houston's rendition of the national anthem at the Super Bowl) is not there anymore. And is it just me, or does she seem to increasingly dress like she's 12? Or is her style really "in" for women now? My readers, please help me out.

Jason Castro (Travelin Thru)--Dolly said Jason went "a little bit outside himself" and what he had been typically doing on Idol with this song choice. Really? Has Dolly been watching? This sounded like most of the songs that Jason has done this year. And I thought he was fine if you like that Jason Castro style--which I kind of do. I thought for sure Randy would go to the "Jason Castro is back" well after his performance, but I guess I wasn't good enough for that in Randy's opinion.

Carly Smithson (Here You Come Again)--I agree totally with Simon. It was good, not great, and not worthy of the weekly Carly slobbering our other two judges love to dole out. I kind of liked the fast, Dolly version of the song better too. As for Simon's comments about Carly's clothes, I've already been reprimanded by my sister for commenting on Carly's wardrobe--so I'll pass on that.But from the neck up, she's never looked better.

David Archuleta (Smoky Mountain Memories)--I was never really on the David Archuleta bandwagon to begin with, and I guess I've given up my seat permanently because I wasn't all that blown away by this performance. He was once again very good, but I wasn't getting those "David Archleta is back" goosebumps that Randy and company were getting. Oh, and American Idol producers: Although it wasn't nearly as bad as a couple weeks ago, I'm hearing way too much applauding in the middle of songs. Please take care of that.

Kristy Lee Cook (Coat of Many Colors)--This started very rough, but improved as the song went on. But it was basically Kristy's typical not terrible, but not close to good performance. Like Ramiele, I'm getting tired of it. But that weird, sarcastic "thank you, Simon" as Ryan was throwing it to commercial could do her some damage.

Syesha Mercado (I Will Always Love You)--Here's my problem with this performance: the song is kind of long and dramatic, and squeezing it all into 90 seconds made it feel rushed and disjointed. I felt seasick by the end. I respected the way she tried to sort of combine the Dolly and Whitney versions, and her vocals were pretty solid, but it just didn't work for me.

Michael Johns (It's All Wrong, But It's All Right)--Michael Johns, welcome back to contender status. We've missed you. He sounded great, and was in my opinion by far the best of the night--soulful, strong vocals. I hope he can keep it up.

So who's hitting the bottom three? Let's hope Kristy and Ramiele are there. I'll add Syesha too, just because she was there last week when she probably had a better performance. Fingerhut out, and let's go Caps.

Gone too soon

2008-03-26T22:42:00.005-04:00

Could he have won? Probably not, unless he put on about six performances in a row equivalent to his performance on the first Beatles night. But Chikezie went too soon. He's far more entertaining and talented than a number of singers still left (see Malubay, Ramiele as example number one). The whole bottom three was a little odd, to be honest--Syesha had her best performance yet, but I guess many people agree with me that she's lacking something in the charisma department. And Jason Castro is thought to be one of the most popular singers in the competition, but he sung early and wasn't as good as in past weeks. But they're still around, and Chikezie is gone. Oh, well.

What is concerning is Ramiele not even making the bottom three (assuming the bottom three is legit--I heard an interview with Chris Sligh from last season the other day, and he raised doubts about whether the producers stuck people in the bottom three who they thought needed more support.) Back in the auditions, she was compared to Jasmine Trias because of her Filipino roots, and hopefully we won't be comparing her to Jasmine Trias seven weeks from now when she makes the final three beacause, like Trias, she had some kind of powerful Filipino voting bloc.

As for the rest of the show, the medley was mercifully short, the call-in segment was tolerable, the Idol Gives Back segment was perhaps the most self-congratulatory segment I've ever seen on a television show, and Kimberly Locke looked good and sung fine. The most interesting part of the show was David Archuleta's defense of his song choice, in which he wondered why everyone else was surprised by his choice. Maybe, David, because no one had ever heard it before? Even Paula and Randy had no idea what it was. Does David Archuleta live in a world where John Farnham is a big star?

Actually, I'm wrong. The most interesting part of the results show continues to be the fact that they need more than 60 minutes to fit in the announcement of one name. My DVR came on at 9:00, went off at 10:00 and still missed the beginning of the show and the last notes of Chikezie's song. Would it kill Fox to keep the show within 60 minutes, or at least tell the DVR listings they'll be starting early and ending late?
You know, we are your customers. Why are you making us miss part of the show because we're not home to tune in at 8:58 and don't remember to set the DVR to come on early? OK, that's the end of my rant. Fingerhut out.