VoxOp
AMERICAN IDOL
"David [Archuleta], I know your gut (or rather you father's) will be to . . . find the most inspirational ballad possible, leaving me bored to tears as you sing your cute-as-pie version . . . Not only will I be reaching for the remote, I'll be reaching for the nearest puppy to kick, knowing that you will feel it - wherever you are. We get it - I was Archuleta'd with the rest of the world as you sang 'Imagine' what seems like years ago in the 'Idol' time-space continuum."But, I also remember, that the week before you started your stampede to the Kodak Theatre, you sang Smokey Robinson's 'Shop Around' which was - scandal alert - fun, up-tempo and about being a man whore. And you were great."
BERJNATA, Midseason Replacements
Ryan Seacrest "proudly informs us that 56 million votes were cast this week. AI is almost recession-proof! Say every text message costs 10 cents. That's $5,600,000 that could've gone to things like, oh, I don't know, helping the cyclone victims of Myanmar, rescuing schoolchildren buried under the rubble of their own classrooms in China . . . "
T.VO, TVgasm
"Consider that hit shows are sort of like most people. They're born, grow, thrive, and then go into a long and inevitable decline. This is called (excuse the fancy word) entropy. It's the law of both the universe and prime-time television . . . The law of prime-time entropy is accelerated for unscripted TV, which thrives on the urgency of 'Did you see that last night?' After a while, you start to answer 'Yeah, I did see that, and I think I saw it last season, too.' . . . 'Idol' is bound up in a golden straitjacket; a guy named David will win Wednesday night, but, in the long run, it doesn't really matter which one, does it?"
VERNE GAY, Newsday
THE PRESS AND THE KENNEDYS
"Stories about Kennedy's health began to resemble a game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. CNN tried to figure out how Kennedy's health would affect the Barack Obama presidential campaign since Kennedy endorsed Obama, John Kerry got a statement out there, and reporters even got Tom Brady's thoughts on the matter. Brady was exceedingly polite and called Kennedy a "great American citizen," but what is he supposed to say?CAROLINE ROBERTS, Bostonist
There "is value - maybe to others, but certainly to the health of my own soul - in separating a man from his mistakes, and of being mindful, even when others are not, that disagreement should not be damnation . . . Senator Kennedy's apparent close call this weekend is an opportunity for political opponents to consider for a moment if they can name anything at all that is gained by denigrating, castigating, Hitler-izing the other side. Disagree, sure. But hate? Where's the upside? Where's the win?"
MICHAEL LONG, National Review
"Let's get real: The Kennedys are neither gods, nor angels, nor royalty. Read your history and you'll learn that much. The media has simply maintained a 50-year plus fascination with them, thanks to old Joe's money, Jack's charisma, and Bobby's relative idealism (later in life). Marked by an eerie excess of tragedy and a sort of heroic hubris, they've also tended to make very good copy, which of course draws eyeballs and boosts sales."
JOHN FARR, The Huffington Post 