Rgirl said:
Well, at least we agree on "I know it's crazy but then again I myself am... 
" I mean, really, where in the heck did you get the idea that Paula and Randy are saying, "'YOU VOTE FOR THE BEST SINGER(S) OR ELSE I SHOOT YOU IN THE HEAD!!!!'" when they tell America that we're deaf, we're crazy, blah blah blah." All Paula said after the vote was, "I think America got this one wrong." Randy didn't say anything. Simon said this just proves that America chooses the American Idol. In interviews in clips on shows such as Entertainment Tonight, they had said prior to Disco Night their choice for AI was LaToya. They were just expressing their opinions and doing so NOT on AI. As for their reactions to Jasmine's Disco performances, as I've said before, what do you want the judges to do, lie?
Anyway, the voters who put booted off great singers such as Jennifer Hudson and LaToya, as well as pretty good singers like George, while voting in mass numbers for comparitively weak singers such as JPL, John Stevens, and Jasmine just added up to the results of the Access Hollywood poll, which asked: "Has American Idol lost its credibility?"
The results:
Yes--91%
No--9%
I'd say that's a pretty strong message.
Also, I have to say that I find more and more truth to Elton John's comment about racism because so far, all the good to great singers who have been booted off and resulted in enormous controversy have been black. (Amy didn't generate really anycontroversy when she got voted off.) In the '60s and '70s, the US was much more liberal and Motown singers as well as artists such as Jimi Hendrix in the '60s, and Donna Summer, Natalie Cole, and Donna Summer in the '70s were embraced right along with the Beatles, BeeGees, Beach Boys, Billy Joel, etc. Except for Eminem, African-Americans dominate Hip-Hop, but apparently the majority of conservatives in this country don't want to have to hear or look at black pop singers, if they have any say in it. Sure, singers such as Beyonce and others get discovered by producers and become huges stars. But put three very talented black pop singers in front of the American public to vote for them and I think a couple of things happen. One is that blacks make up only about 20% of the US population, IIRC, and I think their vote was split between Jennifer, LaToya, and Fantasia, which adds up to a relatively low number of votes for each. The white vote (yes, I realize there are many, many biracial and cross cultural Americans, but just speaking generally) is so much larger that it can be split and still have howlers get voted on. Two is that I think the majority of the country is conservative and have reverted to being "scared" of blacks.
I know what I've said is very controversial and I'm sure I'll get my butt kicked. I'm not saying anyone here is racist, but the way the voting has gone compared to the quality of the singing leaves me with no other consensus to come to than racism is at least a factor in the general voting. I didn't vote in the Access Hollywood poll (didn't know about it), but ITA with the 91% that voted that American Idol has lost it's credibility--and for very sad reasons, IMO.
Rgirl
PS--Thanks for the info on Tamyra Grey's album taking so long because she wrote all her own songs. I take back my inference that she didn't get a record deal for other reasons.
Being Black, Cuban, and American raised, and having studied the issue of racism (or "racisms"--different ways of "majority" populations relating to the "immigrant" or "other" communities in their midst, particularly those to whom they are indebted for rather shameful reasons, i.e. African slaves and their descendants in the US, North African Arab workers rebuilding France after having been colonized for nearly two centuries by the French) and finding myself nauseated by the forces we see at work, far more subtle than many imagine, I wasn't going to TOUCH this one with a ten-foot pole (and people probably wish I hadn't, lol); but after reading the Twins' (Rgirl & Rgal
) very intelligent takes on this, I have to weigh in just to say that racism operates in subtle and not so subtle ways.
What this means is that, if people just automatically hear the accusation leveled at the American Idol audience and say, "that's a load of bunk", they're often not aware of the subtly media-inspired "fear of a black planet", to borrow the title of an excellent and very political album by hip-hop outfit Public Enemy, one of the last politically conscious acts to receive significant acclaim and publicity before hip-hop became about showing the worst possible sex and gun crazed behavior in the Black community (Hugh Grant's mock son in "About A Boy" mentioned loving hip-hop and finding from his listening to it that Black people were "really angry" all the time, but then just really wanted to have sex when they weren't being really angry--paraphrasing here, but that's the gist of it).
This move toward gangsta rap with all its degrading, anti-black empowerment (unless it involves illegal acts reflecting a whole lot of self-hatred deep down) is very much encouraged by the four (or is it five?) White owned media conglomerates, for after studying the issue for years, I contend that there's a great fear among upper-class White America of losing the privilege that comes with being wealthy and White. These conglomerate owners and all their cronies and people on their payroll, going hand in hand with parts of our political leadership, are well aware that their privilege would be at risk if they were to encourage positive, political rap acts attempting to empower Blacks not to steal or kill each other but rather to study, make progress, learn their extensive history of oppression in America and demand that it becomes part of a systematic attempt to educate ALL Americans about Black history including slavery, which IS American history and NOT something to be showcased on the shortest month of the year. The sort of hip hop promoted by today's media conglomerates then goes on to be happily consumed by poor Black populations mesmerized by the glint and the glamour of the "baller"/gangsta lifestyle, full of excess that stands in such sharp contrast to the squalor of life in the projects and, rather than work on improving their situations through study and other more positive pursuits, they are tempted to take the easy way out, the way of many of the hardcore rap stars of our day, i.e. Jay Z, who uses his fame to harp and harp on his gangsta/baller status and make his way of living the standard to aspire to as a young Black person, effectively wasting his rhyming skills to talk about nothing of substance in his lyrics, at least nothing that might empower or encourage young Blacks to seek equality through education.
This type of hip-hop and its enormous popularity (and the utter refusal of media conglomerates to market anything different) serves two very negative purposes, in my mind: first of all, it keeps poor, uneduated Black Americans seeking to emulate "the lifestyle", under the media influence and perceiving other lifestyles as uncool or unhip among their equally snowed peers. The second purpose is to confirm to White Americans that this disgusting caricature that in no way reflects the whole of Black America with its great diversity within the community, is what Black people are essentially about, and this impression, in turn, elicits either disgust and worsens racism, perpetuating the most simplistic stereotypes since the days of Minstrel performances (some call the current hip-hop scene modern minstrel--Spike Lee's Bamboozled speaks to this) or a morbid sort of admiration or fascination, usually among White teenagers who also begin to emulate the gangsta/baller lifestyle, depicted as so cool by the media.
As a huge fan of underground hip-hop/rap as well as of the few positive, politically and historically aware acts who actually get record deals and publicity these days, all those rap groups seeking to educate, not to talk about guns and gangs and tits and a@@, I can confirm that there IS a LOT of hip-hop like that out there. Back in the early 90s, the golden age of hip-hop with conscious, intelligent acts actually making a living like Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, KRS One, and Boogie Down Productions, the latter had a song called "You Must Learn", talking about the history of Blacks in the US, facing severe oppression, abuse, killings, all while virtually building a nation for free and truly at their own expense. The song was all but banned, even though there was no profanity in it. Sign of the coming times (late 90s, 2000 and on)
So, to end this, I submit that the influence of racism finds its way into mainstream America's consciousness very surreptitiously, kind of like a poison in the water; media images of Blacks, from the time we're very little (and even I as a woman of color have had serious issues with African-Americans, having grown up in a conservative White Cuban community where people never believed I was Cuban because of my skin color and where they looked down upon African-Americans and other "darkies"
--they still do, for the record), find their way into the average person's subconscious in the form of negative stereotypes and repeated "negative reinforcement" in the sense of the depiction of the Black man as criminal (see the show, COPS for instances of this--and if you're to contend that they just *are* more likely to commit a crime, do your homework and look at, among other things, the disproportionate poverty--crime begets poverty, and no matter what the Republican establishment might intimate, most poor people are NOT poor because they want to or because they're lazy--many struggle and struggle, work ridiculous hours and still can't dig themselves out of that hole), the aggressive, neck-swinging Black woman as just unpleasant and not at all appealing, and so on and so forth. So you've met someone like this in your lifetime, you might think; have you met EVERY Black person in the country?
So, when Rgirl talks about racist America, I don't think she means that every single American makes a conscious decision to vote for Diana over Latoya because Diana's not Black; the general tendency (and of course, there are exceptions, notably people who are very aware of being either anti-racist and educated about racism and its history or virulently, uncompromisingly racist) is much more subtle and undefined, and due to the diet of media images, to the lack of understanding among peoples in a very divided and, in some places, still defacto segregated country, someone as seemingly different culturally from the white mainstream "us" as a Latoya, with her sass and her confidence that MUST be arrogance, just puts some people ill at ease, and that's not necessarily indicating that they *make a decision* to be racist; it's more a symptom of a much larger phenomenon.
Phew; sorry; just had to get that out. BTW, I don't watch AI, I'm just following this very interesting discussion, especially after an AOL article featured a very rare discussion of potential racism being a factor in voting off Jennifer, the article concluding on the note that maybe this was a good thing, because it would force us as a nation, or at least those of us who see a problem and those who don't and want to argue, into a dialogue that should have been going on for years but that was silenced by the general misinterpretation of the political correctness movement.
Many hear PC and think, "I can't say Black, I have to say African American, that's all the PC movement is about", but as a sophomore in high school when I first studied it in '95, I can tell you that it was more about challenging the notion that the only great works and history deserving to be on school curricula in this country are those of Western European and White North American civilizations, and it was a noble attempt to look at the great literature and thought spawned by those who European ethnologists working under colonialist governments called the "peoples without history", "savages to be civilized by colonialism", etc, as well as to admit that these people *DID* have a history and culture and a rich one deserving of attention as much as Western civ., the long-standing staple of our academic diet.
Okay, that's enough for a lifetime; hope someone gets something out of this post besides impatient annoyance. For the record, this is my first ever GS post related to my academic studies
I can "write this off" as NOT procrastinating on my MA schoolwork, then
Sarah
Come on down!