In Defense of Scott Savol

This is my first season watching American Idol. Maybe the last three years I was bogged down with things like working evenings in a job that sucked out my life force and having, well, friends and not being stranded in Jersey where I know nearly no one.

And maybe it's the fact that Scott Savol is from Shaker Heights, the locale wherein that life force was sucked (see how weird things make me nostalgic?) that makes me root for him. Really, his singing style is not my favorite, and we probably wouldn't be friends in real life (after all, I never saw him around the library) - but I still want to send him a Valentine, still want to see him win.

Mostly, though, it has nothing to do with his Rust Belt roots. I don't, after all, actually believe he's from Shaker Heights, at least not originally - Scott Savol's is most emphatically NOT a "Really Bad Cleveland Accent." It's more like a really bad Kentucky accent, or an accent cultivated from watching too much Hee Haw as a kid. Why I like Scott Savol is because he isn't primped or fluffed or prettified or glossed up. The aforementioned things are why I hate television, and why I'm really starting to dig Reality TV.

So when the message boards get peppered with comments like "I don't like him, he's creepy, he looks like an ex-convict" I have to wonder if these boardies ever interact with Actual People, a lot of whom look a lot like Scott. Non-reality TV (and this shouldn't be a shock to anyone) can present a pretty skewed portrait of life, and there are a lot of people out there who do nothing in the evening but watch TV. (I know, I live above one.)

So, those folks who live and die by the tube, here's my unasked-for advice. Try turning off the TV and interacting with some ugly people. You might like it!