The recently concluded season of American Idol has had its share of controversies from the time it went on air, but there’s no doubt that the biggest shocker was the result. While people expected the suave and extremely talented Adam Lambert to run away with the coveted title, there was a huge upset that the relatively little known Kris Allen, the dark horse in the picture, coolly sneaked in to the finish. It’s a little like the story of the hare and the tortoise, only that it was not Adam who was smug about his victory, but his supporters.
Now the rumors are doing the rounds – Kris won because of the huge teenage and twenty-something fan following that he enjoys; Adam lost because of his apparent links to homosexuality (he has been picture kissing other guys); Kris won because he was the more all-American hero among the two; Adam lost because people did not like the way Simon Cowell was blatantly egging voters to vote for him; and so on and so forth. Some people are even speculating that the results were rigged – host Ryan Seacrest always makes it a point to announce the difference in the number of votes between the two finalists. But this time, not a word from him on the subject.
Can the results of such a popular show be engineered? If so, why should they be engineered in the first place? Isn’t the show hugely popular without having to resort to such gimmicks? Or is it just that the public loves a conspiracy and is not happy without speculating on why the favorite lost and the rank outsider won?
There have been other instances of supposedly engineered results, the most infamous of them being the one that made George Bush president of the USA for eight years. But no matter how huge the hue and cry raised after unexpected results, no matter how skewed the results are from the expectations, you cannot change the way the votes turned out. And so back to AI, we have a new champion, one who was the underdog, but who is set to rule the roost today. Engineered or not, it’s the end result that people remember, not the controversy that surrounded it at the time.