On American Idol, Kristy Lee Cook Should Go, but Ramiele Malubay Says Goodbye

Last night, the petite singer Ramiele Malubay from Florida found out she did not receive enough votes from the viewers to make it to the final eight contestants of American Idol. So according to the rules, she had to go. Well, the rules officially stink.

Kristy Lee Cook was the second contestant with the least amount of votes. She should have been the one to go home. There is no way anyone can convince me that Kristy Lee is a better singer or performer than Ramiele.

In my opinion, American Idol is no longer a singing competition. It's a popularity contest.

The same thing happened in season six with Haley Scarnato. Her musical talent was about as good as a cruise ship Cabaret performer. (If you're not a musician or you don't have a background in voice lessons, you may not get this. Just take my word for it.)

However, if you've ever visited www.americanidol.com, you'll notice they have message boards in support of each contestant. And in visiting Haley's message board that season, there were posts from a bunch of pre-teen little girls who formed a semi-fan club and anointed themselves "Haley's Comets". Aww, isn't that sweet?

This season, it's Kristy's Kadets. That's just adorable, isn't it?

The problem is, in the same way that VotefortheWorst.com keeps around the worst singer/performer, so do these little pseudo-fan clubs. These pre-teen girls will diligently sit with a cell phone and text message votes for Kristy Lee over and over and over again.

Since there is no limit on how many times any one person may vote, it comes down to whose fans are the most psychotically obsessed, and these little girls are. These are the same kinds of girls who caused us to endure years of Britney Spears' mindless, musically lacking pop garbage. They are the machine feeding the craze behind Miley Cyrus and rocketing ticket prices for the singer's concerts into the thousands of dollars.

Sadly, they haven't a clue about musical talent or engaging performance. All they know is to idolize certain female performers because of their superficial beauty. What they don't realize is these girls are covered in pounds of makeup and use synthesizers or lip-syncing to make them sound as if they could actually carry a tune.

Unfortunately for contestants like Ramiele, Chikezie and season six's Melinda Doolittle, the people who actually know good talent typically would not sit around and vote hundreds of times for their favorite contestants. Thus we are stuck with the likes of the Haley Scarnatos and the Kristy Lee Cooks. Cute, but little to no musical substance.

My only hope, since I refuse to run up my text messaging bill by sending vote after vote after vote, is that Kristy Lee really is not as talented as the remaining performers and thus her demise is inevitable. I can only keep my fingers crossed that some idiot record label doesn't choose to give her a country record deal, a la Kellie Pickler. I just don't know if I can stand many more of her lackluster performances.

But I suppose as long as parents keep forking over thousands of dollars for tickets to concerts performed by the musically inept, the record labels will continue to support and sign them. And they say we don't need music education in our grade schools!