What did he Say?

I don’t watch American Idol. My wife does on occasion while she’s marking papers and we were gabbing a bit as the show came on the other night. It was the last audition episode highlighting the failures along with the successes.

The first girl to audition had a fabulous chest and she wasn’t hiding much of it. This caught my undivided attention. I may be over the hill, but I’m not dead. Her voice was pretty good too and she got a ticket to Hollywood.

I mention this because it got me deeper into the show than I would normally get before retreating to my desk and computer. Deep enough to see the second girl to audition, a young black girl telling the camera that she sang in the church choir, that her voice was a gift from God and that God had inspired her to audition.

She repeated the gift from God pitch as she got up in front of Simon, Paula and the black dude whose name I don’t know. The reactions were condescending to say the least. Paula smiled and looked to the side, Simon smirked and the black dude said “Hallelujah sister” in a tone that told you he wasn’t precisely praising the Lord.

Then the girl started to sing a spiritual and I have to admit she wasn’t of the American Idol winner category but she wasn’t completely awful. Well, actually, she was pretty bad, but at least she sort of stayed in tune. When she finished Simon said something to the effect of “Does he have a return policy?”

When Paula asked him what he meant he explained that he wanted to know if God had a return policy because if he had gotten a gift like the girl got he’d want to return it or figure out some way to lose it.

To say the girl looked devastated would be an understatement. Now I don’t know if these things are staged, or the result of creative film editing, but assuming things happened as shown on the show, all I can say is that was an absolutely terrible thing to say to this poor girl.

Just looking at her one could see that she wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed but she was very sincere. I guess folks who knew better had let her keep her delusion that she had been blessed with a beautiful singing voice. I know Simon’s shtick is to be a nasty so and so, but to my mind there is a limit. They could have let the poor girl down a little easier than that. Does he have a return policy? That was an absolutely horrible thing to say.

I know it's supposed to be entertainment and all that but I don't find the total disregard for simple courtesy to be terribly amusing. This poor girl didn't do anything to deserve that kind of smack in the face. Shame on you Simon and shame on Fox for airing it.