American Idol disappoints me ...

WARNING: Rant Ahead!

The season premiere of American Idol was last night, and like millions, I enjoyed watching the previous seasons and set the trusty TiVo to record last night as well. As I was watching, something sort of strange was happenning ... I found that I really wasn't enjoying it.

The premise of American Idol (for those of you that have been living under a rock) is that millions of people audition, few are selected, and America obstensibly votes for who they would pay to hear perform. In actuality, this is only half of the show, and there are arguments as to how well they accomplish that half.

The other half, indeed, the critical first half, is turning hundreds of people into national laughing stocks. While I initially found myself laughing at the plight of the people deluded enough into thinking that they could sing (and the people clearly doing it as a put-on to achieve their 15 minutes), this season some of the pieces of the puzzle from previous seasons all came together in a way that turned me off, and made me realize what an awful show this truly is.

First, understand that what you are seeing during the "preliminary" audtions in front of Simon, Paula, and Randy (plus the new fourth guest judge) is NOT the first audition. No, these people all went through an intially screening audition. You'd think that in typical elimination fashion, what you're seeing now is the best of the first auditions, but this isn't the case. You're seeing a few of the best, and most of the worst. These awful singers are singled out to be ridiculed. While I have no idea what happens in the first audition, I have to imagine that these poor people are being lied to, told that they are excellent singers, and that they'll move on to the next round to see the judges.

It's probably the last in a series of deceptions that have these people auditioning in the first place, because somewhere along the line, family and friends too "kind" to dash someone's dreams have told these hopefuls that they have talent. And everytime for these people, it ends in public humiliation. Sure, there are still the few doing this for the cheap laugh, but for every honest William Hung out there, who just wanted to give it a shot knowing that his singing talents were lacking, there are hundreds who really did think that they could perform, but only because a series of lies convinced them that they could.

It's all done for our sake of course. While this isn't as close to Jerry Springer in terms of exploiting people, at least Springer uses actors and is lightly scripted (if the rumors are to be believed). American Idol comes to us several times a week with new footage of people being humiliated for our entertainment. And it's finally reached the point where I can't watch the audition process any more. I'll tune back in when it's time to cheer on the people that really have a chance. Of course, American Idol's producers will make sure to add "Best of the Worst" shows throughout the season to try to catch me off-guard, so I'll have to make judicial use of the 30-second skip on the TiVo. But I'm hoping that the current phase that Reality TV is in where the goal is just to humiliate people is quickly coming to a close. Shows like The Amazing Race I can get behind because the only people humiliating anyone is themselves through their poor performance. Likewise with Survivor. But I think we've come to the point where we can stop pandering to those of us that just want to feel a little better about ourselves by laughing at the misfortune of others. I mean, if we wanted to do that, isn't that Tsunami a real riot? I didn't think so.