For The Want Of An Idol

On the day the nation would learn that Kris Allen was the eighth American Idol, here in Conway, Arkansas, his hometown, a hullabaloo was brewing. The last of the “how can we make a buck off someone else’s success” holdouts capitulated and arranged on storefront sidewalks “support Kris Allen” t-shirts with their business name on the back. The sign outside Bob’s Grill, “Bob’s Grill Rock’s With Kris Allen” flapped in the breeze with a rapper’s disrespect for grammar. And it seemed even more lawn signs, obviously from the same language-impaired marketing firm, associating a local magazine with Allen, “Magazine 501 Love’s Kris Allen,” appeared throughout the town.

While “Idol fever” made a swift mercurial rise among the city’s residents, the downtown area slowly transformed into a party/watch arena from which moments would be threaded into the evening’s national broadcast on Fox. The parking places on the pavilion side of the street were blocked for broadcast trucks and crew while shoppers and patrons of the local eateries looked for parking elsewhere, further away. Visitors to the County Courthouse discovered much of the parking in front of the building taken up by organizations planning to raise money for themselves in honor Allen’s rise. Further away, Stoby’s restaurant set up their own small pavilion for giving away cheese dip, also in support of Allen, a fact they made nationally known in hopes of raising sales of the dip in grocery stores of surrounding states, that hope having been printed in local papers.

In the evening hundreds, if not thousands of people gathered in watch-party venues to celebrate his eventual crowning. People who had never met him personally, and who were as unknown to Allen as a recent moment’s worth of privacy, cried, screamed, hugged and high fived each other and in other ways celebrated an accomplishment with which they had precious little to do. And yet, it appeared they had, or at least they wanted to have been connected in some way to this success. So frenzied were they in their attempt to siphon some of Allen’s glory that even the casual observer, much less the student of human behavior, could not but wonder why.

And the simple reason is we taught them to.

Not “we” the educational system, but “we” the generations of the last sixty or so years. We’ve taught everyone younger than fifty that the highest honor bestowed upon anyone is fame at the world-wide level.

It probably started with Elvis. By the time we could actually see his hips on television, our nation was in love not only with stars but stardom too. Sensing the public’s willingness to part with money in the quest for following other’s recognition, the media has done little else than fuel the fire with magazines and television shows wholly devoted to what the “stars” are doing, where they’ve been, who they were seen with, whose designer clothing they’ve worn, who they’ve slept with, cheated on and so on. Readers and viewers swoon with a jealousy over stars' attention while at the same time they gush with gratitude for the fact they’ve actually got someone to swoon over.

The great difference, of course, between the stardom of someone like Elvis and many of today’s stars is that Elvis really was cutting edge. He did something that, though the mere outward expression of the rhythm in his own heart, was to a majority of the teenaged world outlandish, outrageous, irresistible, and unknown. The Beatles did the same thing. They too were the real deal, while many if not most of the stars of today just aren’t. Current society so craves attention it will elevate a person like Paris Hilton to internationally known status because she is so incredibly good at “being known for being known.”

Enter American Idol.

It’s a simple formula; hold a national competition, narrow the field to a few truly talented people and then hype the experience to the point that not just any person, but even people who claim to be religious, who attend church and say they know God don’t have the slightest problem calling another person on the planet an idol. Today’s television viewers are so hooked on the concept of stardom, fame, and international attention that they’ll allow producers and talent and media moguls to actually tell them who to worship.

So the country participates with the folks who really stand to make a few bucks off this enterprise by watching the show, the advertiser’s commercials, and by voting through the telephone text method. During this year’s final, almost 100,000,000 votes were cast. At ten cents a vote that’s a cool million for this round alone. The total votes through the final rounds might gross a half a billion dollars worth of text messages. Of course, a sycophant would probably pay an exorbitant fee for an unlimited number of texts, considering the seemingly unlimited number of votes he or she will cast through the season. However, regardless of the cost to the voter, they vote and vote with absolutely no regard to the cost borne by the one they’re voting for.

That’s right, there’s a cost to being an Idol.

And this year we might just discover what that cost involves. For Kris Allen wasn’t already a rising star just needing the boost an accelerator gives a car-battery’s charge. Allen was the music minister of a medium sized church in a medium sized town. Can he allow his faith to poke through the veneer of stardom? Not hardly; just ask Miss Prejean about the patience of glitz and glamour for real, honest conviction. He married last September and probably auditioned for AI a month later. As unknown as his plans before being exalted to international status is the certainty that those plans are on hold for a year while he performs his duties of an Idol. And will his marriage go on hold too?

Stop anyone on the street who’s followed Idol and ask that person to name four of the last seven winners. It goes something like this: Well, there was Carrie Underwood, and that guy who looked like Howdy Doody, oh wait, he didn’t win. Yeah, that’s right; he lost to that big guy who reminded me of Luther Van Dross, what was his name? And if this is the fate of our latest Idol, for what will we have made him endure it? Will we even wonder why as he slides into the obscurity that has kidnapped so many of the others?

A year from now, “We Love Kris Allen” t-shirts will line our city’s landfill because he’ll be “last year’s idol.” The desperation for borrowed coolness doesn’t tolerate obsolescence. Hopefully, a year from now Kris Allen will be in a better place than his trappings. Only time will tell.