Apologies. I have not yet written anything about the inexplicable phenomenon known as Sanjaya Malakar, who has defied all logic and somehow managed to survive all the way into the top ten of this season's American Idol. I say this because it's general consensus that the kid is easily the worst of the bunch, and he should've been axed a long time ago, yet somehow people keep voting for him. I've particularly enjoyed these blogs on the matter: Sanjaya Must Be Stopped; Bringing Balance to the Force

Better performers than Sanjaya have already been sent home. I haven't been following the competition very closely this season, but I've seen Sanjaya perform a couple of times, and he's waaaaay out of his league. The love/hate frenzy over Sanjaya is intense! Things got really bizarre on last week's show when they kept showing this crazed, crying girl in the audience during his performance, apparently moved to tears by the S-Boy's rousing rendition of "You Really Got Me." Maybe she's the girl who keeps calling to vote. There's also an extremely vocal anti-Sanjaya movement out there fueled by people who are truly horrified at the prospect of him winning the competition. They believe this is a crisis, and they're out to preserve not only the sanctity of American Idol, but the very notion of American democracy. One American Idol viewer has even gone on a hunger strike: Starvation for Sanjaya. According to her MySpace page, "So until the day that Sanjaya is no longer American Idol, I will be going on a hunger strike. This means I will refuse to eat anything until American Idol voters wise up, and stop voting Sanjaya through each week." That is some crazy kind of dedication.

And Vote For The Worst, a website proudly dedicated to destroying American Idol, has been urging visitors to vote for him. The logic is, what better way to demonstrate the suckiness of Idol than to have everybody vote for the suckiest guy to win? Maybe they're the ones responsible for this. The xenophobic reaction, of course, is to point to all the South Asian voters (millions of them!) who are allegedly keeping Sanjaya in the competition. Maybe they are. Whatever the case, I find this all highly amusing. Heck, I'd love to see the South Asian kid win. And I'd love to see the takedown and ridicule of Idol even more. If Sanjaya wins, I'll be laughing. We'll see if he survives another round this week...