League of Melbotis

The League has a confession to make. The League watches American Idol. The League even VOTES for his favorite contestants (God bless toll-free numbers and re-dial).

Thanks to the power of Digital Video Recorders, Mrs. League has managed to cut the entire hour long program down to about 10 minutes. No commercials. No Randy, no Paula, just enough Simon to hear his verdict and cheer him on as he craftily manipulates the voters of America.

(Example: Last night, after a very decent vocal performance by Vonzell Solomon, Simon said, "You better hope your supporters vote for you." In Simon-ese, this means: You did very well, and in order to ensure people who might be sitting on the fence vote for you, I will make it sound like you need all the help you can get. This will ensure you receive an adequate number of votes. Sure enough, Vonzell was one of the top contestants this week.)

I don't know why I watch the show. I mean, it's a stupid show, the performers are somewhat talented, but the style of music doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. I am also well past blaming Jamie for my viewership.

So, of course, this evening I watched the entire Corey Clark deal on ABC. And here, I must get in lock-step with Randy. I'm an American and I'm an idiot, and the news magazines have no trouble exploiting that to boost ratings. Across the planet we have avertable catastrophe after avertable catastrophe, but this evening I dedicated an hour of my life to watching this sorry excuse for a human being "admit" to having had relations with Paula Abdul.

And I think Jim or Randy was going to write a biting editorial on the North Korean situation, but it hasn't appeared yet.

Now, let me clarify: If I had known pretty much any famous person the way Corey claims to have known Paula Abdul, I'd probably want an hour of prime-time TV to tell people about it, too. However, I wouldn't be trying to get a recording contract and a book out of it. I just like to share.

You can read the various reports which are probably trickling out on CNN.com, Yahoo! News, etc... The evidence which Clark provides is circumstantial, but that certainly doesn't mean that it isn't pointing an enormous glowing arrow toward Corey's camp. Corey appears to be a complete jackass, but that doesn't mean he's lying. And just because he's not lying doesn't mean he isn't absolutely without talent.

I had forgotten in the two years since he was on TV how truly awful that guy really is.

Anyway, after the full hour of prime time TV dedicated to this nonsense, our local affiliate spent 5 minutes covering the exact same story we'd spent an hour watching, then would update us every commercial break to tell us lots of people were voting online whether or not they believed Corey.

98% of people didn't believe him. 98%.

Sure, he's an untrustworthy schmoe, but what, exactly, did Paula Abdul to gain our trust? Was it the dancing cartoon cat that won us over? Was it the failed marriage to Emilio Estevez that had us thinking, "She cannot tell a lie!"

Or was it the hit-and-run car wreck from earlier this year? Or the revelation that Paula's been hopped up on goofballs for the past few seasons of AI thanks to some back injury.

I dunno.

The important thing is that the Spurs won a decisive victory and are on to Round 2 in the play-offs.