American Idolatry
Robert Rouse
May 26, 2006
OMG! I can't believe I missed "American Idol" . . . AGAIN! I have missed every single episode since it first aired back in 2002.
Why the heck don't they promote this thing? I see ads for "Anderson Cooper 360°", "The Situation Room", and "Larry King Live" all the time, but not a single promo for "American Idol". And I always seem to catch news stories about the show too late. Seems like every single time they mention the show, they immediately go to their entertainment segment and I change the channel.
I think I know the premise - a group of intellectuals sit around discussing historical and contemporary Americans and whether they should be considered American Idols.
That's rich, and I'd really like to catch an episode someday. I'm not sure, but I bet they've discussed a lot of people by now, so I'm going to try an experiment. I will name some famous Americans and pick which ones I would allow to be called an American Idol.
Compare my picks with the show and I bet they're very close.
- George Washington? That's a no-brainer - of course he's worthy of American Idol status.
- Thomas Edison? Damn right!
- Abraham Lincoln? If it wasn't for his leadership, there might not be an America as we know it today.
- Henry Ford? I'm more of a GMC sort of guy, but you have to give the man props for that assembly line thing - it has, over the past couple of decades, brought a lot of jobs to robots.
- George W. Bush? Only if there is a special award for best joke fountain.
- Teddy Roosevelt? Abso-Bully-Lutely!
- FDR? Hey, the man was president of this country longer than any other man in history. Longetivity has to be worth a few points on its own!
- Albert Einstein? Yeah, I know he lived over here, but come on, the guy was born 62 miles east of Stuttgart, Germany.
- Benjamin Franklin? I bet this guy had to be the big winner of at east one of the five seasons. Writer, philosopher, early electrician, politician, patriot, co-signer of the Declaration of Independence, diplomat, publisher, firefighter, and I hear he was quite the ladies man - girls like musicians and he could play one heck of a glass harmonica.
- Elvis Presley? As much as I admire the man's early work, I just can't see putting a singer up as an American Idol. Maybe as an American music icon, but to be an American Idol, I'm sure their qualification standards require a lot more than being able to sing "Jailhouse Rock".
- Richard Nixon? That's for history to decide, but he did bring us international table tennis!