Are you going to watch the new season of "American Idol"?

I'm going to check it out. I'm interested in how they deal with the absence of Simon and whether there's some resonance with America's (supposed) new civility.

UPDATE: I think they've done a reasonably good job of rolling in the new judges, but too much time was spent trying to establish that Jennifer Lopez is the "new Paula." I'm not interested in her preening over how nice she is. If she can't judge, she shouldn't be a judge. But I blame the editors. They think — I assume — that a "new Paula" is what the people want. Steven Tyler is focused and crisp. He'll be okay. But everyone needs to sharpen up. I don't want to watch Jennifer Lopez show us that she's a nice person, and I don't want to see the contestants demonstrating their love for her either.

UPDATE 2: Basically, a successful adjustment to Simonlessness. Steven Tyler is particularly good at simple, short, varied statements. Both Tyler and Lopez have interesting and expressive faces — which saved a lot of time, when, really, all we need to hear is yes or  no. Randy seems to take naturally to the seat of authority. We never saw the judges fight or even disagree, so the emphasis was on the contestants, and we mainly saw good ones. No one was humiliated, and we weren't subjected to the usual demonstrations of delusion and the mundane fact that many people sing off-key. Yeah, it might get boring as they sift through all the cities in Stage 1 of the competition, but it might get better as it becomes less urgent to convince us that Lopez and Tyler will be okay.