corey clark --who???-- tries to renew his 15 minutes
Those who tune out all things celebrity may not know there is a scandal raging around American Idol and its perky judge Paula Abdul. Corey Clark, a second season Idol loser, claims he had a secret affair with Abdul, during which she helped him pick songs and offered other assistance in his unsuccessful singing competition bid.
Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. There are certainly plenty of credibility issues to go around.
• Clark was thrown off the show when an undisclosed criminal arrest came to light. Bitterness and revenge, anyone?
• Clark is shopping around a book. He has a financial interest in making his claims.
• ABC, which brought the allegations to light during a heavily promoted sweeps-month episode of Primetime Live, regularly gets their ratings butt kicked by American Idol. Could their interest in damaging American Idol cloud their journalistic judgement? They have more to gain from an Idol fall than Dan Rather stood to gain from taking out Bush.
Some people are calling for Paula Abdul's head, saying she should immediately be fired. (I'd also like Paula Abdul's head, but for completely different reasons, I'm sure.)
The Associated Press quotes television analyst Shari Anne Brill as saying, "If there is a shred of truth that she messed around with a contestant, you won't see her as a judge next year."
Access Hollywood's media consultant felt Paula's leaving was not only required, but would be no big deal, because "there are plenty of other has-been singers from the 80's" who could take her place. (That quote was paraphrased. I couldn't find his name or exact quote on the 'net.)
And FoxNews.com's Mike Straka said, "If any of Corey Clark's allegations are true, Paula Abdul must resign from her posh position as a judge on the world's most popular singing competition — pronto." Straka concludes, "But in my Grrr! opinion, no matter how Abdul spins this, she's gotta go."
I was originally going to give it 50/50 that Abdul would be removed. Now I'm going to downgrade it to a less than 20% chance they will dump her, mainly because the noise from the American Idol camp is that they have never received any complaints from any contestant about the allegations, nor have they been furnished any evidence, and Corey Clark shows no signs of cooperating. (Maybe if they paid for his info....)
In my opinion, if Fox drops Abdul it will be an almost instant death to Idol. The carefully built chemistry would be destroyed. It would be like removing one of the high performance tires from your Ferrari and replacing it with a tricycle tire. Let's not even mention that the same Associated Press article quotes research which indicates Abdul is one of the top reasons fans enjoy the show.
I've seen American Idol weather other controversies I expected to damage it, and many analysts cite such incidents as proof the show doesn't need Abdul. Not this time. Dumping Abdul would be like NYPD Blue going to the well one too many times with their casual firing of Rick Schroeder. They'd survive this season, but the next one -- minus her -- would see a dramatic drop off that even her desperate rehiring could not end.
But considering how much so many have to gain from Idol's death, maybe that's exactly what the critics hope for.