"American Idol" -- results.

42 million votes. It's like a presidential election! Oh, but if you could multiple vote in a presidential election, there'd be a billion votes, right?

They launch into a group sing of that horrible song "Love the One You're With." There's something abusive about pressuring young people to put their all into these lyrics, but they do. I pause to write this and see they are all doing that legs-apart crouch. Ugh! They are also all scrunching their eyes closed in faux bliss and curling their upper lips noseward in manufactured sass. Except there's Bucky, wiggling himself into an S shape. I think he's just trying to keep up.

Oh, the pain! This song was insufferably cheesy when Steven Stills tried to foist it on us in 1970. How can it even exist today?

Wow! Mandisa's dressed in a bare black top, showing off her rippling arm flesh and letting us see exactly how amazingly wide her hips are at the point where they merge with tree-trunk thighs. I'm impressed! She gives real meaning to the term pear-shaped. Yet this is the right fashion choice. You can't wear a muu-muu and read as young. Go with the jeans and the cute top and whatever it is you have under it.

They bring out last season's winner, Carrie Underwood. She sings a song called "Jesus Take the Wheel." I take it this song is already a hit, but, of course, I have never encountered it. I think there's something ineffably weird about "American Idol" promoting religious faith. They're trying to ape something that once was sincere in the American country tradition. It seems wrong to drag Jesus into that strained effort.

Brenna is the first to go. America, it turns out, is good at getting it right. Here's where TiVo comes in handy. I fast forward through her reprise of "Last Dance." The other "girl" to go is Heather Cox (not Kinnik Sky). Fast forward.

Now, the "guys." The bottom three are Sway, David Radford, and Kevin Corvais. And David -- the faux Sinatra -- goes first. America's smart, no? And the other guy to go is... Sway. Aw, that's sad!

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