It’s amazing to me how American Idol fans are starving to create a controversy. The latest silly attempt to create one involves the save of Jessica Sanchez during the American Idol 11 Top 7 Week.
TMZ claims that the producers told the judges that Jessica would be eliminated and lobbied them to save her.
First of all, this just doesn’t ring true. They may have told the judges that Sanchez got the lowest number of votes, but there would have been no lobbying involved. That is just silly and sounds like a staff member exaggerating the situation. Of course, the producers want to save Jessica. But they wouldn’t need to lobby the judges to do that. With only one week left to use the save, they wouldn’t wait to save someone else. It is patently obvious that Jessica had to be saved.
Second, it’s ludicrous to think that it’s controversial if the producers even demanded that the judges save Jessica. Anyone who still thinks that the judges are anything more than role players and mouthpieces for the producers is either extremely new to American Idol and reality TV or consciously ignorant of reality. This isn’t a beauty pageant where the judges are supposed to make an independent decision. Rigging a beauty pageant would be criminal, and people have even been charged for allegedly rigging such a contest.
But the judges on Idol are only treated as independent on the show. In no way would the rules of the show dictate that the judges have independence. There is no controversy here because no rule has been broken. It simply doesn’t matter what producers told or did not tell the judges about Jessica Sanchez and the save.
TMZ’s Harvey Levin is a lawyer. Do you see him ranting about a possible criminal investigation? There were no rules broken. This is just another topic for TMZ and everyone else to get a little extra traffic to their websites. Thanks for the money, Harvey. 