American Idol will soon be banned from being recorded on my Tivo forever - or at least until America gets her act together. Last night, the American Idol elimination round just set me over the edge when America voted off Sabrina Sloan (powerhouse singer) and Sundance Head (bluesy rocker). Yes, I admit it, along with loving gadgets, VoIP, and consumer electronics, I'm also an American Idol fan - along with some 34 million other fans. The sad thing is after the Chris Daughtry shocker last season when he got voted off by idiotic voters that somehow thought Elliott Yamin was better than Chris Daughtry, that  I am no longer surprised by the voting results. No offense to Elliott, who seems like a nice enough guy.

The reason why I'm banning American Idol is how ridiculous the voting has become. In Season 4, many people believe that a large portion of Scott Savol's "fan base" actually consisted of people who were attempting to destroy the credibility of American Idol by voting for someone they considered the worst finalist as a sort of anti-American Idol protest vote. The Vote for the Worst movement at Votefortheworst.com gained overnight attention when Scott outlasted Constantine Maroulis.

Which leads me to last night's ridiculous voting results. Sanjaya Malakar has once again made it to the next round against all seeming odds, besting Sundance Head (who named him this wacky name any way?). Sundance was clearly a superior singer to Sanjaya. Now you could argue that Sanjaya appeals to the teenage demographic more than Sundance. But have you been watching Sanjaya this season? He looks like a deer in the headlights any time he's asked a question by Ryan Seacrest. If he were any more shy they'd have to operate and implant a personality.

Further, Sanjaya has some feminine qualities to him - the way he talks, the way he moves/dances. He actually reminds me of Michael Jackson - I think he may have even song one of his songs, but I can't be sure since all of Sanjaya's performances are so unmemorable.

I checked out Sanjaya's bio on the official American Idol website and Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder are listed as his two favorite male artists. Well, that explains a lot! Maybe the 8-16 year-old demographic finds feminine boys/men attractive? Certainly, Michael Jackson's fan base for the most part seems to stay within that age range. I never really understood why young girls find effeminate males so attractive. Check out this funny banner on Votefortheworst.com:


  How did we get to the point where America votes for the worst possible candidates? Ut oh, I'm sensing a President Bush joke here from my liberal audience. Although not as shocking, Sabrina Sloan getting the boot Thursday night annoyed me as well. No offense to Haley Scarnato, but you're not nearly as good as Sabrina Sloan.

I hate to play the race card, but the only theory I have on that one is that Haley Scarnato is white and Sabrina Sloan isn't. Both are very attractive women and both are good singers. Actually, Sabrina is a great singer and Haley is a "good" singer. But unfortunately in "white America", simply being a "good" singer and "white" is enough to trump a great singer of a non-white nationality. As a white person myself, I find myself embarrassed for my fellow Americans to be so shallow. I'm so ticked off at the results last night, that I'm going to do something about it. I plan on installing an Asterisk IP-PBX along with a dialer application that can blast out hundreds, perhaps thousands of calls over the course of two hours and make sure that the best candidates get through. I'll setup several SIP-based ITSPs (Internet Telephony Service Providers) to blast VoIP-to-PSTN calls. I'll get my hands on some Sangoma or Digium T1 cards as well to blast over traditional PSTN.

Sanjaya will be eliminated next week if I have anything to say about it. I'll make sure the dialer votes for the 2nd weakest candidate, which in my opinion is Brandon Rogers - just to make sure he has more votes than Sanjaya. This presumes of course that the 3rd weakest American Idol has enough votes without my help to beat Sanjaya. Of course, AT&T Cingular, the carrier responsible for tracking the votes could detect the CallerID of my Asterisk server. But there are ways around that too - like CallerID spoofing! :)

One last point about Sanjaya. I'm not sure Sanjaya's nationality, but he looks Indian, so perhaps he is getting Indians, Pakistanis, and others of Southeast Asian descent to vote for him. I have another theory, as well. Indians are especially tech-savvy, (See: IT Outsourcing to India) so perhaps they beat me to the punch and have several Asterisk servers blasting calls to vote for Sanjaya. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Note (Added on 4/3/07): I received some emails about my mentioning Sanjaya's nationality, such as "Sanjaya is an American, you racist scumbag!". I had no idea people would misinterpret my words. My nationality is Irish and I'm an American. Simply mentioning Sanjaya's nationality was not to disparage the fact that he is 100% American. I never intended to claim Sanjaya was not an American citizen. Uhh hello, the show is called "American Idol", so obviously he's American. Not unless FOX starts allowing illegal immigrants to perform on American Idol. In which case we can call it "North American Idol". My point was simply about his nationality, not his country of original. People are so damn sensitive and politically correct. Can anyone not mention nationality without being accused of being racist? C'mon people!

I was really looking forward to watching both Sabrina and Sundance perform over the course of the next several weeks, but now I'm forced to watch Sanjaya sing at least one more song - one more lame and torturous performance. I've been robbed - America has been robbed of future great performances from Sundance & Sabrina. This will be Sanjaya's last performance. I'll make sure of it.