{"id":183,"date":"2004-04-28T09:24:32","date_gmt":"2004-04-28T17:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/?p=183"},"modified":"2004-04-28T09:24:32","modified_gmt":"2004-04-28T17:24:32","slug":"elton-john-on-american-idol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/2004\/04\/28\/elton-john-on-american-idol\/","title":{"rendered":"Elton John on American Idol"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the big shocker on American Idol last week (yes, now that I no longer live alone, I watch American Idol) Elton John felt the need to comment. Basically they are down to 7 contestants, and 3 of what many consider to be the best candidates, ended up as the bottom 3 (they got the fewest votes). I was immediately reminded of last year (ok, I have no excuse for watching last year) when Ruben was in the bottom 2 at one point near the end. Ruben went on to win the competition last year.<\/p>\n

This year, 3 of the best singers are black women, and Elton John thinks that the fact that they ended up in the bottom 3 is nothing short of “incredibly racist<\/a>.” This quote is classic:<\/p>\n

“The three people I was really impressed with, and they just happened to be black, young female singers, and they all seem to be landing in the bottom three […]”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even if you ignore the suggestion that the bottom 3 has been made up of all black men\/women more than once (which it hasn’t), his suggestion of racism in American Idol is moronic for a number of reasons.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Of the 12 finalists<\/a>, the first 5<\/b> voted off were caucasian. None were black and\/or African-American.<\/li>\n
  2. Last year’s winner was black.<\/li>\n
  3. The winner the year before was female.<\/li>\n
  4. The majority of the remaining contestants are black. There is only one white male even left in the competition (and he’s due to go any day now).<\/li>\n
  5. The absolute worst<\/i> part of his statement is this line: “and they just happened to be black.”\n

    What he’s saying is that his favorites all just happen<\/i> to be black. Just coincidentally, there is a group of people he considers to be the best, and they all have the same skin color. However, should that same group of people be considered the worst, no longer<\/b> can that be considered a coincidence. Oh no, that must be racism. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It’s really amazing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    After the big shocker on American Idol last week (yes, now that I no longer live alone, I watch American Idol) Elton John felt the need to comment. Basically they are down to 7 contestants, and 3 of what many consider to be the best candidates, ended up as the bottom 3 (they got the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interesting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TCqO-2X","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lianza.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}