Since season 2, I have been an American Idol fan. Heck, at the end of that season I drove with my SIL and MIL to St. Louis to see the American Idol tour. Those were the days of Clay and Ruben. Ah Clay. A voice of an angel he has. That was back when we were still in denial about the …ahem … lifestyle choices of Clay. I could listen to him sing all day.
American Idol has been for eight (or is it nine?) years just a modernized version of the good-old-fashioned variety show. I love it because it’s good clean fun that the family can watch together. It gets more fun as the competition heats up toward the end, and we enjoy it every year. It is, in fact, the last network TV show that we watch at my house.
We never exactly made the decision to quit watching TV. It just sort of happened.
One by one our favorite shows were canceled (RIP “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Homicide” and “Seinfield.” And the rest of them … well we let them go one by one as the girls got older and we became painfully aware of the crap that each show offered. Foul language, sexual innuendos, women who make the poorest role models for girls, and men who treat them like garbage. And “funny” turned into to “sex.”
Today’s television writers don’t know how to be funny unless it’s a sex joke. I’m not exposing my kids to it, and frankly B and I don’t enjoy that junk any way.
There may be a series or two out there that we would enjoy today, but as we got used to having the TV off, we just filled up our lives with other things. We just became a family who doesn’t really watch TV. We do a lot of DVD’s when we need the downtime. (We all love “Little House on the Prairie.” We’re on Season 8 right now!)
But Idol was the one show we still watched. I’ve always told people, “it’s just good clean family fun.”
Well, it was until last night.
The bikini girl stunt with her newly enhanced “features” barely covered by her bikini, strutting her obnoxious self all over the stage while Ryan salivated and make crude jokes. Then they let her sing, making a bigger mockery out of the entire thing. And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough – to have Kara, one of the judges, come out and rip her dress off and reveal her own barely-there bikini ….. UGH. It was just disgusting.
I was mortified to have my children in the room. I was appalled at how long it went on. I realized that American Idol does not care about being what it started out to be any more – they are going to fight their ratings slide by appealing to a new audience and sex it up like everything else on TV.
There was so much else about the show last night that was disgusting – who knows what happened during the time they bleeped out Fergie, or was it the Black Eyed Peas? It any case … American Idol has decided to become what the rest of television has: TRASH.
No thanks. Now, where are those “Little House” DVD’s?
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Ashli, you nailed this one. You really should be a columnist and a huge publicaton! We did not watch too much of the finale, we did not find it interesting. But I am glad Chris won. I am like you, unless there are big changes, I tuning out of Idol next year. MOM
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