Meade monitors "Morning Mika"...

... and calls me over to see this...



The chattering and overtalking on TV is so annoying, I say, and then Meade is watching on mute with close captioning. He declares it to be very amusing because he's focusing on the facial expressions.

"They're so self-satisfied. You really see it. You see them overacting and over-emoting for each other, for themselves. It's big jerk circle. It's a circle of jerks. ♪♫♬In the ciiiiiircle of jerks♪♫♬."

Meade's musical reference:

"Ada vox had the best voice of the whole competition but conservative america ignored that bc she was a drag queen and that’s the tea."

That's one tweet, grousing about the results on the most recent episode of "American Idol," quoted at "Ada Vox Lost ‘American Idol’ Because She Wasn’t The Best Singer. Period," by Clay Aiken. Aiken, a gay man, is a former contestant. He came in second in Season 2. Aiken tells off the shows critics:

That outraged Twitter user was correct: This is a competition about singing. And Ada Vox, entertaining performer though she doubtless is, was not the best singer. No, ma’am.

Most of us were thrilled to see a contestant breaking down another barrier. We were excited to see an out and proud contestant doing well and living their truth on an American institution.... Ada Vox was not eliminated because she didn’t conform to the societal norms of “Idol” viewers; she was eliminated because she didn’t conform to the key of the song.

Remember, contestants don’t get voted off “American Idol.” They failed to get voted on. Ada Vox didn’t have millions of people logging on or calling into ABC and voting to remove her from the show. She simply couldn’t grab enough viewers (or high Bs in “Circle of Life”) to compel them to vote for her.

A few thoughts:

1. "That's the tea" is defined at Urban Dictionary as: "That's the gossip. The deal. The current news. The latest."

2. I'm not so sure what Vox was doing counts as "living their truth." Vox is a drag character created by Adam Sanders after he tried out for the show 12 times as Adam Sanders and never got too far. The female performance was much more successful than what I would guess Sanders prefers — showing himself as a nonconforming male. Wasn't what he tried 12 times more the truth than the drag performance?

3. I give a lot of credit to Clay Aiken for going on the show in 2003 and presenting himself forthrightly as as a nontraditional male (basically, what Sanders attempted 12 times before turning to drag):



4. Clay Aiken was on Season 5 of "Celebrity Apprentice." He came in second (losing to Arsenio Hall). Here he is expressing his respect for Donald Trump back in 2015:

"Lisa Loopner got me this week: She was the only person to embrace the ancient charms of Disney, dress for that occasion like a 4-year-old in love with the Walt vault on Halloween..."

"...  and bring us back in time like an old theme-park ride. She wasn’t above the occasion. She dove into it with that fierce, strange color-guard-captain commitment. Points for picking (1) a song that doesn’t immediately scream Idol-worthiness, and (2) a style of song that tells us something new about Catie herself. Face it, she’s a cunning competitor and a real talent. I’m wary of people who like hugs too much but she’s working this karaoke derby right."

That's Louis Virtel at Vulture, rating the 10 performers on last night's "American Idol" and putting Catie Turner in second place with her lovely "Once Upon a Dream":



"Idol" did something completely new last night: It required viewers to vote during the show and announced the outcome at the end of that very show. It ran live, at the same time in all time zones, which meant it started at 6 p.m. in the Mountain Time Zone and at 5 p.m. in the Pacific Zone. Who knows how that affected the outcome, but the drag queen contestant, Ada Vox, was one of the 3 contestants eliminated. It was drastic to cut 3 all at once. The top 10 is normally dragged out, with only one cut per week, and a very nice send off for each, with a review of that person's "journey" through the contest and one last song. Last night, we learned that 3 were leaving as the time for the show was running out. Suddenly, 3 whom we'd been made to care about were sort of stunned and wandering aimlessly on stage, and that was it. Brutal!

That said, Vox deserved to be in the bottom 3. Virtel ranked her 9th, and she chose to sing "Circle of Life." Not a great choice, and it sounded pretty unpleasant.

"What the hell am I doing here?/I don't belong here..."

Ada Vox/Adam Sanders on "American Idol" last night:



"Creep" is kind of an "American Idol" tradition, notably from Jena Irene in Season 13:

"We’ve had a lot of artists come on here, talented, but a bit confused. What you are giving us is a clear understanding of who you are, coming in with an amazing amount of talent."

Lionel Ritchie flips the concept of confusion, when a former contestant, Adam Sanders, returns to audition in drag as Ada Vox. As Gay Times put it: "Vox then slayed the mother-tucking house when he performed a stunning rendition of House Of The Rising Sun by The Animals."



Come on, The Animals didn't write "House of the Rising Sun." There was another contestant (Zach D'Onofrio) who said he was singing "'Cry Me A River' by Michael Buble." This is crazy talk. "House of the Rising Sun" is an old folk song. The Animals recorded a fine and memorable rendition, but unless you're them you're not singing "House of the Rising Sun" by them... or unless you mean to say I intend this to be heard as an Animals impersonation, which was certainly not the case here. Vox intended to be heard as a female and not as the unusually macho Eric Burdon:



And it wasn't The Animals who dug "House of the Rising Sun" out of the old folk archive. It was Bob Dylan, getting the jump on Dave Van Ronk [correction below]:

In late 1961, Bob Dylan recorded the song for his debut album, released in March 1962. That release had no songwriting credit, but the liner notes indicate that Dylan learned this version of the song from Dave Van Ronk. In an interview for the documentary No Direction Home, Van Ronk said that he was intending to record the song and that Dylan copied his version. Van Ronk recorded it soon thereafter for the album Just Dave Van Ronk.

So there's no reason to attribute "House of the Rising Sun" to The Animals. No good reason. The bad reason is, the show tells contestants to introduce the song that way to maximize the chance that its (presumably dumb) audience will have a glimmer of familiarity.

As for "Cry Me a River," it became popular in 1955 because of a recording by Julie London, not that she wrote it. It was written by Arthur Hamilton, who seems to have invented what is now a cliché:

"I had never heard the phrase. I just liked the combination of words... Instead of 'Eat your heart out' or 'I'll get even with you,' it sounded like a good, smart retort to somebody who had hurt your feelings or broken your heart." He was initially concerned that listeners would hear a reference to the Crimea, rather than "..cry me a...", but said that "..sitting down and playing the melody and coming up with lyrics made it a nonissue."

The Michael Buble recording was a minor hit in 2009, and many people have recorded the song over the years, including Shirley Bassey, Dinah Washington, Barbra Streisand, Lesley Gore, Joe Cocker, Crystal Gayle, Diana Krall, and Etta James. That is, it's more of a song for a woman to sing. Which is maybe why Zach D'Onofrio didn't make it through (and I don't give a damn about Michael Buble).  Aerosmith also recorded "Cry Me a River."

Hey, that reminds me. We have already seen an "American Idol" performer in drag:



It was Steven Tyler, a former judge on the show, doing a faux audition for comic effect.

All the performers are wearing costumes, even the guy in khakis and a checkered shirt. As RuPaul said — and I quoted here a week ago — "We're all born naked the rest is drag." And speaking of RuPaul, his show is really popular these days, so it's not surprising that the struggling "American Idol" wanted to get in on the action. I think Adam Sanders as Ada Vox seems old-fashioned and depressing compared to the drag queens on "RuPaul's Drag Race," but Ada Vox has a good vox, not to my taste, and who knows what TV pseudo-drama they'll crank out of that story? They already did drag as burlesque comedy with Steven Tyler, which, as I said at the time, was a throwback to Milton Berle, who was the biggest star in the (short) history of television, back when Julie London was thrilling us with "Cry Me a River."

I was around back then in the 1950s, when drag was Milton Berle and the ideal of femininity was Julie London:

... Julie London was my father's favorite singer. As a child, I had reason to believe that she was the most compellingly beautiful woman in the world. As I heard her singing, she was whispering. That was the gimmick: Whispering. Listening to it now, I hear how sexy it is intended to be to a man. I'm not sure whether it's completely subtle or a sledgehammer of sex. It's trying to be both in a way that would seem ridiculous or naive today, unless you could convince yourself that it's ironic. But it's not ironic.

CORRECTION: I should not give Dave Van Ronk credit for dragging "House of the Rising Sun" out of the archive. He deserves credit for a distinctive arrangement of the song, as a careful reading of the Wikipedia article I've already linked to would make clear. Woody Guthrie recorded the song in 1941, and Lead Belly recorded it in 1944 and 1948. There are also recordings by Glenn Yarbrough, The Weavers, Pete Seeger, and, yes, Andy Griffith in the 1950s. And there's also Miriam Makeba and Joan Baez in 1960. So it was standard for folk singers before Bob Dylan's famous supposed affront to Dave Von Ronk.