Standards vs. “American Idol” voters

In a recent installment of the Murketing Journal email, I mentioned this piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which argues that the show’s popularity partly reflects a desire for authority and arbiters of standards.

We might think that Americans are eager to celebrate talented young people who can thumb their noses at the older generation and thus exorcise the lingering resentment so many harbor from being graded and evaluated in the classroom. But what American Idol reveals instead is a veritable hunger for realistic evaluation. …. The show reveals a respect for expertise.

That struck me as an interesting point of view at a moment that, to me, seems pretty hostile to official sources of authority. Crowds are better than experts, open-source is better than anything involve a “gatekeeper,” and so on.

And today I see that the Associated Press has an article suggesting that nose-thumbing may be popular among American Idol watchers after all. Sanjaya Malakar, “who is considered to be one of the weakest performers” on the show, keeps avoiding elimination because he gets so many votes from viewers.

In the online community and in Malakar’s home state of Washington, the croaking crooner seems to have a loyal following of friends, family and fanatics who would like nothing better than to see him achieve the ultimate “Idol” success and be the last singer standing in May.

Simon Cowell has supposedly said he’ll quit the show if this guy wins. And:

One YouTube contributor in New York has launched a hunger strike and vows not to eat until the 17-year-old is ousted from the show.

Identifying herself only as “J,” the woman says she believes “other talented contestants” are being eliminated by those who think it “funny to try and sabotage American Idol by voting for a lesser contestant.”