Dan Neil has 800 Words on American Idol. Go read them all, but here’s some of them:
In this newspaper’s op-ed section, author Thomas de Zengotita theorized that the popularity of “Idol” reflected the onset of the “virtual revolution,” a pervasive self-publicizing impulse (blogs, chat rooms, MySpace.com) that has ordinary people “demanding a share of the last scarce resource in the overdeveloped world—attention.”
This is a grand bit of pop culture hermeneutics, and it’s just bull. “Idol” is a talent show, an amateur singing contest, no better and no worse—and no more driven by digital culture—than the “Original Amateur Hour,” which ran on radio and then on television almost uninterrupted from 1934 until 1970. Were “The Gong Show” and “Star Search” also manifestations of the virtual revolution?
In fact, it’s the celebration of amateurism that makes “Idol” so compelling; conversely, it was the Olympics’ semi-pro vibe that made the Winter Games so farcical and forgettable.
…Far from polishing the almighty pedestal of celebrity, “Idol” takes a wrecking ball to it. Here is proof that pop stars are not so unapproachably special and rare that they deserve to be worshipped. People just as talented and just as worthy may be shelving your library books or cold-calling you for newspaper subscriptions or cleaning your pool. It turns out we’re a pretty gifted species, Homo sapiens cinderellus.