The last American Idol faceoff of the season provided all the thrills and suspense of the average episode of Teletubbies -- but with lousier music.
Several of the predictions made in jest yesterday on this blog actually came true (eeesh), but the joke was on the record companies that will have to put out CDs by Taylor Hicks (the likely winner) and Katharine McPhee (the all-but-certain also-ran). Two of the tunes sung by Hicks last night (Elton John's "Levon" and Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City") are more than three decades old, and McPhee's standout offering ("Somewhere Over the Rainbow") first made a splash during the Great Depression. Which means, I guess, that the impending Hicks and McPhee discs will hit the sweet spots of music buyers between fifty and ninety. That's a sought-after demographic.
A more interesting question is whether or not more people participated in last night's vote than cast ballots for George W. Bush in 2004; the numbers from previous weeks noted on this site suggest that Bush's 62 million vote total is well within reach. The tally awaits, but the debate has been ongoing for a while. A page on the well-named Gullible.com features a discussion about whether or not Kelly Clarkson, the first Idol, earned more votes than Bush -- and the numbers have only risen since she took the crown.
In the immortal words of Yakov Smirnov, what a country. -- Michael Roberts
