American Idol - Cynicism Likely To Keep The Worst With Us For A While

Now that the final 10 males and females have performed it is clear that the worst perfomers continue to include the newly controversial Antonella Barba. Sundance Head finally found a piece of himself this week and gave a decent performance in the only style he appears capable of mastering. Tony Bennett week will be a hoot if he is still around. Excruciatingly bad this week was Sanjaya Malakar, he of the very weak voice and enormously cute smile.

But fear not, dear reader, the cynicism of Americans knows no bounds. According to the vote predicting DialIdol site, both are very safe. Likely to take the fall are: Haley Scarnato, Leslie Hunt, Stephanie Edwards or Gina Glocksen among the women; and A.J. Tabaldo, Chris Richardson, Nicholas Pedro or Brandon Rogers among the men.

None of these probable losers are undeserving of the appellation. There never was any possibility that any of these folks would prevail as the ultimate winner. It will take weeks for the field to be cut down to a size at which only the worst singer each week will be eliminated.

My admiration for Melinda Dillon continues. She is so mature and comfortable a singer that she seems to be in a different league than the others. Among the men, Blake Lewis was newly impressive singing a Jamiroquai song with, as Randy said, a high degree of difficulty. He was able to make the song his own with some scat singing, a quick touch of beat boxing, and an onstage comfort that bespeaks professionalism.