"To think that I would go on a national TV show and get away with continuing a lie so big... is ridiculous."

Says the "extremely remorseful" Matthew Farmer, who went on "American Idol" and told a story of military combat service replete with exploding IED, brain damage, and PTSD. In fact, though he was in the army, he never saw combat.

Soldiers who served with Farmer claim that Farmer's injury came from mixing Accutane, a prescription medication for acne, and alcohol.

Farmer denies allegations that he was sent home for unauthorized use of medicine. He blames the producers of "American Idol" for distorting his story through editing.

The contestant, who sang Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" for the judging panel, blames "Idol" for focusing on his war stories rather than on his little girl, who accompanied him to the audition.

Farmer accuses the editors of "chopping up" parts of his interview and focusing unduly on his story of being medically evacuated from Iraq.

He meant to exploit the child, not the military service. Watch the clip at the link. The poor child looks exceedingly displeased with her father, as if she knows he's shaming himself, lying.

Steven Tyler appears in drag on "American Idol" and quotes Bob Dylan's "Talkin' World War III Blues."

He came out as if he were the last contestant and maybe it took half a second to recognize the big rock star (who was on the judge's panel last season). The news reports of the little stunt emphasize the drag and the (miniscule) surprise, but even where the lyric is quoted, the attribution to Bob Dylan is missing. Here's the NY Daily News:

"What the, what?" Randy Jackson said when he got a first glimpse of his former co-star on stage.

"My name is Pepper. I'm going to sing a song called 'Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa, Our Love Going to Grow, Wah Wah,'" he joked to judging panel. "But before I do I'm going to judge you all (bleeps) first."

I'm not finding any news reports that place the lyric — which I have engraved on my brain — in the old Bob Dylan song. "Talkin' World War III Blues" has 12 verses of Bob talking his way through a dream he had about walking through post-nuclear NYC, with all the people gone from the "lonesome town." Here's the 9th verse:

Well, I remember seein’ some ad
So I turned on my Conelrad
But I didn’t pay my Con Ed bill
So the radio didn’t work so well
Turned on my record player—
It was Rock-a-day Johnny singin’, “Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa
Our Love’s A-gonna Grow Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah”

Tyler said "Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah," by the way, just like Dylan, not "Wah Wah," as the Daily News would have it.

Now that you get the reference, is there anything to be made of it? Maybe Dylan was making an in joke at the time and Tyler was referring to that joke. Maybe Tyler wanted to alert us to the threat of nuclear war. Maybe Tyler wanted to wink at Dylan fans. But the best clue I found — as I did a Google search to see if anyone had recognized the Dylan quote — was an article from back in November about  friction between Tyler and current-season judge Nicki Manaj. Tyler had said in an interview:

“If it was Bob Dylan, Nicki Minaj would have had him sent to the cornfield! Whereas, if it was Bob Dylan with us, we would have brought the best of him out, as we did with Phillip Phillips....”

Manaj thereafter tweeted:

“Steven Tyler said I would have sent Bob Dylan to a cornfield??? Steven, you haven’t seen me judge one single solitary contestant yet!”

And:

“I understand you really wanted to keep your job but take that up with the producers. I haven’t done anything to you. That’s a racist comment.” 

Racist because it's against her... or because sending someone "to the cornfield" is a reference to slavery?

“You assume that I wouldn’t have liked Bob Dylan??? why? black? rapper? what? go f— yourself and worry about yourself babe.”

To quote Bob Dylan — especially while dressed in a garish blonde wig and big inflated breasts — is to tweak Nicki. Talking blues is related to rap, somewhere in the ancestry. The quoted line, which is talked, is about singing, singing like a rockabilly guy — "Rock-a-day Johnny" — and Tyler was acting as though he were going to sing the song Bob Dylan heard. Dylan is all alone in his dream, looking for company, and in his desperation, he turns on the radio, and then puts on a record, and it's this pop culture idiot, singing nonsense — ooh-wah, ooh-wah —but it's very poignant, because, after the war, Bob is longing for any kind of a voice. In the 10th verse, he calls the telephone number where a recorded voice says the time, and he listens to that voice, repeating the same time — 3 o'clock, the time the war started — for over an hour.

So Steven Tyler had a lot to say, if anybody wants to notice. He's saying we don't get artists like Bob Dylan anymore. The music industry — like NYC after the bomb — is devoid of real people. We're desperate for a human voice. And Nicki Manaj is the embodiment — for all her voluptuous physicality — of emptiness. He was spoofing her, critiquing everything, crying out for real human art, which — for him — Bob Dylan embodies.

But did anyone hear him? He pranced out as a clown. He was dressed as a woman. It resonated in the hollowness that has always been television. In drag, with that wide smile, he even looked like Milton Berle.



IN THE COMMENTS: In this post where I chide others for missing the Dylan reference, Mumpsimus dings me for missing a reference:

"To the cornfield" refers to the SF/Horror story "It's A Good Life" by Jerome Bixby. Or, more likely in this context, to the Twilight Zone episode based on that story.

Dust Bunny Queen links to this TZ clip.

"Nobody in el mundo will believe that I am not still and forever the most beautiful person who ever straddled the floor..."

"... so I have to help out the people at People by looking less beautiful all the time, and then also when they pick me again in two years people will be like, 'Ay, yes, and she has put those weird fangs away!' And second, lovers, I won American Idol week. Mariah who? Nicki Minwhat? ME. So do not feel sad for me, lovers, and do not feel sad for the person on my team who got fired for this or for the people at People who I tried to get fired before I understood that this was my destiny."

Is this Mariah-Nicki thing going to work?

Is anyone watching?

We watched the first hour last night (with the rest saved on DVR), and, well, it seems the problem is that Nicki Manaj came to play. She's prepared. She's like the Tracy Flick of "American Idol." She's studied, and she's ready. If this reality show were "Survivor," she's be voted off immediately, because she wants it so bad. Meanwhile, Mariah Carey obviously believed she could simply swan in and be Mariah. That's enough in itself. How awful to have to be one of 2 women, when the other woman wants it so bad. It's like the wife and the mistress.

But there isn't even a husband. Unless America is the husband. But America, in "American Idol," is a whole lot of young girls. And what do they care about a wife and a mistress clawing it out? Poor Mariah! Don't tell me Keith Urban/Randy Jackson count as the husband who will step up — in this exaggerated TV sitcom — and choose the right woman, the true sweetheart, the wife, Mariah. These men are oblivious to the psychodrama. They're floating along aimlessly as if the only thing really happening is a talent show, where various young people try to sing as well as they can, and modestly knowledgeable judges give honest assessments.

Oh! My heart breaks for Mariah. But I must say, Nicki has won it all. She came to win and she crushed the competition in the first hour. Congratulations! But... is anyone watching?

Democrats like cartoons, Republicans like reality shows.

According to TiVo-based research.

Over all, the Democratic list contained a lot of animated comedies — “The Cleveland Show,” “Family Guy,” “American Dad” — as well as lightly viewed but critically acclaimed sitcoms like “30 Rock” and “Community.”

The Republican list, beyond sports (Nascar was [in addition to golf, big), was populated with a host of reality shows — “The Biggest Loser,” “Survivor,” “American Idol” and “The Amazing Race."...

Mariah Carey becomes an "American Idol" judge.

Which means Randy Jackson is staying (since he is her manager).

Carey was a guest mentor on "American Idol" in 2008, and she did an excellent job. I see I wrote: "Kudos to Mariah for doing the show the Barry Manilow way." The link goes to a post of mine that criticizes Dolly Parton for not guest-mentoring the Barry Manilow way. Here's the really old post, from 2006, praising Barry Manilow:

I just want to say how much I like Barry Manilow. Not his music, which isn't to my taste, but him as a person. Unlike Stevie Wonder and various other guests, he did not do the show to get the kids to sing his songs, and he took his role as a music teacher seriously. He really analyzed each performance and came up with concrete help and never seemed to be at all about self-promotion. I know you could say that this nice-guy thing is just his gimmick, but if it is, it works well, and maybe more people ought to try it.

I don't know who the third judge is going to be in the new "American Idol," but I'd be perfectly happy to have Barry Manilow.

"Neil Diamond…yes, here he is, Neil himself, who, in his old age, has adopted the talking/singing style of Rex Harrison as Professor Henry Higgins."

For some reason, that's what I found to be the most entertaining part of the final "American Idol" results show last night.  That and the way Jennifer Holliday looked like she was going to devour Jessica Sanchez. I also like the part where Phillip Phillips, having won, and being left on the stage to sing a final song, realized he didn't have to sing and just cried a little, then walked over to his mom for a hug, which became a big old family hug (until Jennifer Lopez trotted over to infuse the hug with her extraordinary beauty and talent without which the season could not properly end).

"She sings like Lana Del Rey on Robitussin, and, well, looks something like Lana Del Rey after a couple decades of Robitussin."

An apt description of Lisa Marie Presley singing last night on "American Idol."

"Neither man nor woman has ever sang that good or with that much compassion on this show, ever."

Said Steven Tyler, one of judges on "American Idol" last night who "sounded like the characters in that kids book 'Guess How Much I Love You,' competing to be Ledet's biggest admirer."

The poor judges had peaked too soon and run out of superlatives. They had little left to offer Sanchez, although, as she stood before them, trembling and weeping, they had scraped together what they could.

What judicial drivel this season!

"Did Christians punish Colton Dixon for singing Lady Gaga?"

"[I]t’s possible that his surprise elimination from ['American Idol' last Thursday] was because he turned religious viewers away by choosing a song that had the wrong message—a thinly veiled way of acknowledging that he didn’t choose a more Jesus-friendly worship song."

He seems to be suggesting that his fans actively punished him (“turned a lot of people off”) for choosing non-Jesus-friendly lyrics (“a better song,” “a better message”) in the form of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.” A commenter notes that his previous songs had been “Christian anthems up until this point.”

In case it’s not clear that Colton is devoutly dedicated to one thing and one thing alone, he also said that during his final song,

“I wasn’t singing for [the judges]. I wasn’t singing for my family or anyone in the audience. I wasn’t singing for anyone at home. That song was between me and my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We had a cool moment onstage for sure. But I wanted to end it the way I started it and the way I told myself I would do this competition, and I’m glad I got the opportunity.”

And later Colton said: “I’ve taken pride in knowing who I am and taking a stance in my faith, and by choosing ‘Bad Romance,’ I turned off a lot of those voters, who are my core voters.”

"Tonette taped American #Idol. We are watching it now. I like the 80s music!"

A tweet from Gov. Walker. I'm reading his Twitter thread, looking for some links to material explaining/justifying all that legislation he just signed. In particular, I'd like to know more about the repeal of the 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act, which I referred to a couple posts ago.

In the comments there, I was asked to analyze the new law, and I looked around a bit and only found criticism of the change. HuffPo is writing about it. Walker's recall challengers — Kathleen Falk and Tom Barrett — are lambasting him predictably. Eventually, I found something, but not before I got sucked into Walker's fascinatingly banal Twitter feed (which I once compared to "Jim's Journal").

Also in the recent Walker Twitter feed:

Up early for a haircut then out enjoying the beautiful sunshine! What a beautiful day the Lord hath made....

Sadly this is not a good Fri for the #Brewers....

Spent am signing bills in Milwaukee office then off for Good Friday and later for #Brewers Opening Day @ #MillerPark....

I drink several bottles of #cranberry juice each day. Glad our output is up 11% according to USDA...

This is charming... unless you hate the guy, as many do. In which case, I assume you're jeering or beating your head against the wall. He needs to explain these new laws persuasively. His opponents get so far out in front of him. He reminds me of George W. Bush, who seemed to believe that decent people would give him credit for doing the things he believed were right. Meanwhile, his antagonists controlled the narrative.

"J-Lo, can you scoot over a little bit?"

Telling Jennifer Lopez to move her sublime ass?

There really is only room for one female on the "American Idol" panel. Whenever they've squeezed in a second, they've wrecked the dynamic. Sorry to deal in stereotypes here, but the way the judges' panel has been structured since the first season, there's a woman, in the middle, performing a stereotypical female role. Paula Abdul pioneered this role, empathizing with everyone, speaking from the heart, and squealing special love for the boys. Paula got ousted, and other females had there time in the middle seat, but now they've got Jennifer, and Jennifer has far outstripped Paula. And I love Paula, but Jennifer is the queen.

She was low-key in her response to Nicki Minaj: "I don't know if there's enough room for both of us." A demure reference to her most famous body part, and a fully justified expression of intention to keep it firmly planted in the center seat.

"American Idol" contestant will be confronted with his criminal record and kicked off the show.

The drama is on video, which will air on tonight's episode. That should be a ratings boost. Obviously, the news has leaked out so that people will watch:

Jermaine Jones [will be removed from] the show Wednesday [because of] his criminal record, which he hid from Idol's producers. TMZ reports that Jones was charged with two crimes in 2011, one involving violence, and in both instances he gave a fake name to cops when arrested. Even more surprising (particularly for the person responsible for vetting the contestants), Jones also has outstanding warrants.

Interestingly, the linked TMZ report doesn't name Jones. Perhaps it did before. It's a better ratings-goosing teaser if we don't know who the person is. Why didn't they catch the outstanding warrants? How do we know they didn't? This could all have been a set-up. Jones was originally eliminated from the competition at the point where the judges got the numbers down to 12 males and 12 females. Then, at the end of that show, they had a ratings-teasing announcement that they'd decided to bring back one of 4 of the males they had just eliminated, so that the show would go forward the next week with an uneven number of males and females. That was all very odd. I suspect they brought Jones back because they knew they'd be kicking him out later in a shockingly dramatic confrontation.

Through reality-show editing, Jones has been portrayed as a gentle giant (he's huge) and a big "mama's boy." "Mama" has been shown numerous times. Viewers have been encouraged to see him as a big lovable teddy bear. That has been similar to the presentation of Ruben Studdard, who was the ultimate winner in the second season of the series. Studdard is the only black man who has ever won the show, for what that's worth.

Goodbye to Davy Jones.

The lead singer of The Monkees has died of a heart attack at the age of 66.

Very sad. We were just talking about the importance of the cute boy singers who play a role in the gentle romantic fantasy lives of adolescent girls. The kids today have Justin Bieber. Don't diminish these idealized boyfriends. Davy Jones was one of mine. I was 15 when "The Monkees" began on TV, and Davy was absolutely perfect.

ADDED: We were talking about the importance of cute boy singers because of one of the "American Idol" contestants this season, Eben Franckewitz. Here's how adults react to his performance last night:

This cutie... He just sounds so young and weak. Maybe he's just really nervous? Then no, the chorus doesn't really get any better. Oh, Eben.... Obviously, this kid is not going anywhere because we all know how this show works by now, but this was not a good performance.

But... spoiler alert...

According to DialIdol, he's in first place by a mile. Obviously, it's the young girls who are watching and voting, and he is their boyfriend.

UPDATE: I was wrong about Eben. He missed the cut when the votes came in.

"Steven Tyler Sings/Screeches/Murders The National Anthem."

"The Aerosmith frontman, who also twilights as a judge on the hit show American Idol, has certainly seen better days. You have to believe that if 'judge' Steven Tyler saw 'singer' Steven Tyler perform this poorly he probably wouldn’t put him through to 'Hollywood week.'"

Yeah, that was putrid.

(Feel free to talk about the Ravens and the Patriots, going on now, and about "American Idol," which started a new season this week.)

Married in 2004, they renewed their vows in 2008 and in 2010, and now they're getting divorced.

What's really going on behind the scenes with couples who renew their vows?

The couple described in the post title consists of the most beautiful woman in the world (according to People magazine) and a man who isn't even average-looking but was previously married to a Miss Universe. That man had a whole big number on the finale of "American Idol" this year which he only had because he is married to the woman he is now divorcing.

Scotty wins. Seems to be having a love affair with Lauren.

Beyonce appeared to be in hell while singing a hellishly awful song. Steven Tyler got to follow Bono. Jennifer Lopez's husband had a whole big number because he's Jennifer Lopez's husband. Tom Jones showed up and sang "It's Not Unusual." Besting him in the oldest man competition, Tony Bennett was there. He's 85! He sang with Haley. Like they're a couple. Judas Priest deigned to appear. "American Idol" is not something they scorn. Who can scorn "American Idol" now? They sang with James Durbin. And Jack Black sang with Casey Abrams. That was ugly. Jacob Lusk got Gladys Knight and they sang about Heaven. Lovely. Scotty McCreery did a duet with Tim McGraw who, we're told, is the most-played artist on the radio of the last 10 years. And Lauren Alaina did her duet with Carrie Underwood. And Lady Gaga sang about being "on the edge" while standing on a scenery cliff, which I was worried she'd fall off of, and then she did intentionally fall off in the end, onto some hidden foam, no doubt. I'm sure she'll be back to howl at us on future occasions.

Off the top of my head, that's what I remember from tonight's big "American Idol" results show.

"I think Beyonce is a great pop songwriter. Still, the lyrics to this song are classic faux empowerment..."

"... as she's literally suggesting women run the world by being very persuasive with our vaginas."

Amanda Marcotte wrings her hands over a song that mostly consists of saying "Who run the world? Girls" over and over. I saw this video when it played on "American Idol" last week, and I couldn't really make out what her literal argument was. It seems to me, you hear that one line over and over and you're distracted by vivid images of the singer (which could be characterized as "being very persuasive with [her physical presence]").

Oh, what do you want to talk about here? Feminism? What is the real feminism? Whether Marcotte misused the word "literally"? How songs affect the mind? Is it with the lyrics, read literally, or in some more complicated way?

"UN-COOL, UN-HIP, COUNTRY-FRIED SINGER WINS 'AMERICAN IDOL'..."

"SOURCE: SCOTTY TOOK NEARLY DOUBLE AMOUNT OF VOTES OVER RUNNER UP... DEVELOPING.."

Drudge, linking only to a general article about the season, purports to know the results.

But, he's right of course. Everyone who checks out DialIdol knows it and has known it for weeks. It's not some special inside knowledge. The finale show last night was terrible, mainly because they were desperately trying to make us believe it was a close competition. And they weighed Scotty down with 2 songs that had him speaking like a child — the original song "I Love You This Big" (ugh!) and some other song about schoolchildren. The guy is only 17, but his main feature is a deep voice that makes him seem much older. Why fight that with lyrics from the point of view of a child?

Anyway, speaking of old and young, the show tried to rejuvenate this season, with Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler (and without Simon Cowell), but somehow it ended up even more old fashioned. Maybe that's what happens when you don't have Simon there insulting the kids for seeming old and old fashioned.

"The last time I rooted for someone this much in a reality tv finale, it was the Battle of the Davids on Idol."

"Before that, you might even have go back to season two of The Amazing Race (Chris/Alex v. Tara/Wil), but let's all agree on this one -- Rob Mariano has to win tonight."