Populism and American Idol

With the electoral season upon us, the electoral college and populism have popped up in a lot of recent conversations. In my heart of hearts, I desperately wish that I believed in direct democracy, but I have a lot of reservations, and I need look no further than the U.S. version of Pop Idol to illustrate my case.

First off, the program was doomed even before it began. Choosing to call it “American Idol” immediately tainted the show with imagery of Americana. Should we have called it Pop Idol, like the U.K. original, or even (A la Recherche de la) Nouvelle Star, like the French version, our experience would have been vastly different. Those shows make no pretenses about attempting to manufacture new pop music sensations. Still, our network execs and producers chose the star-spangled title, so we’ve been blessed with contestants who say they want to be an American idol like Frank Sinatra.

I first saw the problems with letting the public directly vote for their favorites during Season Three, when there were cries of racism when Jennifer Hudson got the boot. I was suspicious but didn’t chalk it up to racism. I knew there definitely was a problem when Latoya London failed to garner votes, though she had clearly given the best performance of the week.

Looking at finalists who have made significant success from recording contracts — which is what the show’s supposed to be about — there are clear color lines.

Kelly Clarkson is the only true pop idol to have resulted from the program, and her songs have been more or less accessible to many diverse populations in the country. Chris Daughtry, on the other hand, clearly only reached white audiences. Even worse, Carrie Underwood, Phil Stacey and Kellie Pickler have only been able to break through in the country market. Ruben Studdard, Kimberly Locke, Fantasia Barrino, and even Jordin Sparks have barely made a collective dent in our pop scene. Most of the finalists from the show only seem to be able to star-stud Broadway marquees, a clear failing of the program.

The first problem seems to be that in this form of direct democracy, we are not rewarding merits and achievements, we’re voting based on feelings and preconceived notions. It’s the same kind of sports fan “we-they” mindset that plagues our politics, even when there are more than two candidates. Good performances routinely fail to win votes when, instead, we vote for someone else because, well, we just like them.

The second problem is that, even though Top 40 radio stations have essentially become hip hop and R&B stations, our black winners and finalists are not receiving support somewhere along the line. It could be that their record labels are choosing the wrong songs for them or marketing them poorly. There is the nagging possibility, though, that the American buying public has distinctly skewed itself toward white artists.

The electoral college and the republic system, sometimes called representative democracy, were designed to slow things down. They were put in place to try and make sure that no one like-minded group formed a runaway train in terms of forming the decisions that affect all of us. It hasn’t worked for the past eight years, though, and we have seen a presidential administration that, for the first time in history, went before us on TV and said they didn’t want to follow the rules. In that light, I could certainly stand to slow things down a little bit, even as we try to dismantle the mess that we’ll be left with come January, when the new guy gets sworn in to office.

For everyone still stinging from the belief that the 2000 presidential election was stolen from Al Gore, you should also know that higher voter turnouts have historically favored the liberal candidate, so if you’re unhappy about it, get out there and vote, damn it.

In the meantime, for everyone who feels pretty powerless, take care of you and your own. It can be as simple as picking up the trash in our neighborhoods, getting together to watch the election results, or even giving someone grief for voting for Sanjaya. By doing the right thing — and leaning on others to do the same — we can directly affect our world.