From the Archives: Darth Sanjaya

Season 6 will likely be most remembered for the phenomenon known as Sanjaya Malakar and how his very presence on the show almost brought down the American Idol empire. With all the attention that he was getting I couldn't help but comment on it back in April. So, seeing it is the time of year when we typically reminisce and remember the year that was, let's travel back in time and revisit The American Idol story of 2007.

There are a lot of links in the story, and surprisingly they are all still active, so knock yourselves out.

From April 9, 2007:

It appears that the greatest threat to American civilization is not terrorists, global warming, or the Republican Party. No, my friends, it's become quite clear to me over these last few weeks that the greatest threat to our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is American Idol contestant Sanjaya Malakar.

It started out innocent enough. Sanjaya went to the Seattle auditions for American Idol with his sister Shaymali. He started his audition by telling the judges that he thought his sister was a better singer than him. After his rendition of Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" the judges thought that he was the better singer and send them both to Hollywood. During the Hollywood tryouts Shaymali was sent home, but Sanjaya benefited from a much weaker male field of contestants this year and managed to get selected to the group of 24 contestants that would be vie for America's vote.

Early in the final 24 it became obvious that little Sanjaya did not have the vocal chops that some of the other contestants had. However, he managed to stay below the radar primarily for two reasons. One was that as bad as he was most of the other guys in the competition were about the same or only slightly better. The other was that the evil forces trying to sabotage the show were too busy trying to get Antonella Barba through to the finals to pay any attention to Sanjaya.

Who are these forces of evil? They are a small group of ner-do-wells who operate a site called Vote For the Worst.com (VFTW for short). This site started in 2004 with the expressed purpose of urging people to vote for the contestant who they thought the producers least wanted to see win. They believe that the Idol audition process is unfair and that people who are bad singers but could potentially make for good TV are invited on the show at the expense of more talented but perhaps less charismatic performers. In the past they have supported contestants such as Jasmine Trias, Scott Savol, and Kellie Pickler, who all finished higher than expected in part due to their support. However, while in years past their influence only went so far (none of their first picks has made it to the final 2) this season their evil has been amplified by the endorsement of America's shock jock, Howard Stern.

I probably don't need to explain who Howard Stern is. If I do then the rest of this blog won't make much sense to you anyway, so I'll move on.

Once Barba was voted off the show and VFTW selected Sanjaya as its pick Stern started a campaign on his radio show to urge people to vote for Sanjaya. Sanjaya also revealed that he once lived in Hawaii and could do the hula, and Idol fans know from Jasmine Trias' success in Season 3 how strong the Hawaii voting contingent can be. With all these powerful forces coming together around this kid Sanjaya has managed to stay on the show for 4 weeks now with no end in sight. He hasn't been in the bottom 3 since Week 1.

The growing threat that Sanjaya might actually win has led some to stage some rather drastic measures to try and stop this from happening. There are hunger strikes documented on MySpace to convince people to vote against him, a DJ in Philadelphia is living on the roof of a Toyota dealership until Sanjaya is voted off, hackers breaking into votefortheworst.com after each show to bring down the site, lawyers threatening to sue Stern and VTFW on behalf of the American Idol producers, and judge Simon Cowell saying that he would quit the show if Sanjaya wins. This is truly morphed into an epic battle of good versus evil, all over a 17-year-old with a semi-weak singing voice.

It's obvious to most, perhaps, that Stern and VTFW are in fact deliberately trying to sabotage the show. If Sanjaya does win you can all but guarantee that Idol won't last for more than another season or two as its credibility as a singing competition would be all but shot to Hell. The Times of London is already predicting this. This would no doubt please those who have aligned themselves against the show and are using Sanjaya as the conduit to try and bring it down. However, I doubt that such actions are illegal or are legitimate grounds for a lawsuit, nor are such actions justification for hunger strikes and sit-ins on car dealership rooftops. This is only a TV show, it's not like we're electing a President here.

It would not surprise me at all if Sanjaya quit the competition sometime within the next few weeks. He seems like a good kid. I doubt he expected all this fuss to be made about him or that he would be used by some to deliberately wreck havoc on the program. He claims that he doesn't pay attention to any of that but it would be hard for him not to, and how else can you explain the mohawk hairdo? It's a question of how far does he want to go and how badly does he want to win the competition. He's become in essence a circus clown, but with Stern, VFTW, and perhaps the entire state of Hawaii on his side he's got a legitimate chance to win even though every singer left in the competition is better than him. It'll be interesting to see just how this all plays out.

And I don't even want to begin to speculate what all this says about America. Maybe it's not Sanjaya himself that is the greatest threat to American civilization, but the reaction to him that is. At least, though, he is a rich source for blog material.