‘American Idol’: A Sanjaya reverie

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Tuesday night’s “American Idol” raises so many issues, it is hard to know where to begin, so let’s tackle them from largest to smallest.

To begin, the grinning, rolling on the floor elephant in the arena — the Sanjaya problem — threatens to tear “Idol” nation asunder. There have been joke contestants who live unnaturally long life spans before (Kevin Covais, Scott Savol) but never have they been so openly contemptuous of the show as Sanjaya Malakar. Watching live from the Idoldome, one can see Sanjaya has clearly morphed from establishing a passive aggressive juvenile distance from the competition to the point where he seems to be giving the whole thing the finger.

Surely Sanjaya is aware of the controversy he is causing, of the counter-Idol movements (votefortheworst.com, Howard Stern, etc.) that are promoting him. Has he taken up their banner as “Idol”’s anti-hero? If so, this introduces a toxic element which has never been unleashed on the Idol stage.

Another factor to consider — if it is true that, as one contestant said last week, that Blake, the Chrises and Phil Stacey are all roommates, this means that in the guys’ dorm, the surviving gentlemen contestants are all in one room together — except Sanjaya, who then would be in a room by himself.

If this is the case, also consider Sanjaya presumably would’ve come to inhabit this suite after the decapitations of his roommates. So we can visualize the specter of Sanjaya, after watching his roommates be killed off one by one, sitting along in his cavernous, cold, bare dorm room while the cool kids party down the hall, surfing the web and seeing how one girl is starving herself demanding he be kicked off while at the same time he has become a hero to a generation of Idol haters. . . . you don’t need to be a Carl Jung, just someone who reads enough comic books, to know that this is how super-villains are born.

Of course, as the secrets of Idoldorm remain more tightly guarded than the cells of Guantanamo, all this is pure speculation. . . . But until we get real answers, the how and why of that hair style, speculate we all must. It is our duty as the “Idol” electorate and citizenry.

Second, Gwen Stefani was the biggest twit of a mentor ”American Idol” has ever seen. Could she give one single compliment without couching it in “If he can only... ”? Poor Chris Sligh having to endure the “He was definitely off” review from the woman brought in to help him. These kids today could learn a thing or two about celebrity mentoring. Bring back Barry Manilow.

Finally, let’s condemn in the strongest possible terms the reduction of “Idol”-horsepower to a mere hour a night. To think: Just several weeks ago we had five hours a week of “Idol” viewing, and now we are down to a meager, paltry ninety minutes. Are they trying to wean us off the show? The Idol producers ought to remember their debt to their obsessive compulsive core fan base and feed us adequately.

--Richard Rushfield