Sanjaya's 15-minutes are just about over

Well, it had to happen sooner or later - Sanjaya's days on American Idol are over (for now!) He definitely won't get a recording contract or, if he does, it will probably go the way of William Hung. But you gotta hand it to this kid: he turned his Idol experience, with a mediocre singing voice, into a fan sensation with a cult-like following. I wouldn't be surprised to see him turn this experience into an acting or modeling career - he is a good-looking kid and he has amazing chutzpah. He continued to fly in the face of conformity and against all odds.

I hate to be trite but the simple lesson here is to believe in yourself. It is amazing what can be accomplished when you believe. It also helps to have millions of people vote for your success. Even though Howard Stern and others were encouraging fan support of Sanjaya as a way of mocking the contest, I don't believe for a minute that he avoided elimination ONLY because people thought he was the worst. In fact, I bet this ploy accounted for only a small fraction of his total votes. Think about it, would you really spend $0.99 per text message to vote for this guy just to mock the show? Multiple times? Can people really be motivated to spend their hard-earned money just to prove a point?

38,000,000 people voted this past week to send 6 finalists on to the next week and it looks like the real talent fans showed up. Perhaps they were scared of the idea of seeing their favorite supplanted by Sunjaya. So fans rallied and called in their support for Melinda, Jordin, Blake, Chris, Lakisha and Phil so they wouldn't have to see Sanjaya's next hairdo choice. That's real motivation. I wouldn't be surprised if Howard Stern sees a little kick-back "thank you" gift from AT&T for the amazing amount of revenues generated by this mocking agenda. What a country! If only we could vote for President via text message and by phone. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we see something like that in the next election. We have had more people vote for this year's American Idol than voted for President Bush. Now that I think about it, perhaps www.votefortheworst.com got its start back during the last Presidential election.......hhmmm.