You knew it had to happen: an American Idol winner got more votes than any American President:
The most popular talent contest in America, if not the world, has crowned its latest victor after polling a record 63.4 million votes.
The host of American Idol, Ryan Seacrest, announced in considerable excitement that the figure was “more than any president in the history of our country has received”.
The show’s phenomenal success has prompted many comparisons with the country’s declining political participation.
The final of its fifth series drew its largest television audience to date, almost on a par with the Oscars, and underscored the phenomenal success of the British import, now a multi-billion dollar franchise and popular culture behemoth.
The latest idol is a prematurely grey, chubby-faced 29-year-old singer from Alabama whose husky-voiced soul numbers and quirky dance moves won him an army of fans.
But Taylor Hicks won for his singing.
If he was put into competition with another factor, he’d get less votes than an American politician.
He still can’t give the American public the kind of song and dance like some American politicians have.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.