Words of the day

If yesterday was Photo of the Day (and it was) then today stands to be Word of the Day. The word today is pointless. Used in a sentence: Amerian Idol is pointless.

Several headlines across the Internet (capital I) urged us to click (the cyber version of peer pressure) to find out whom the winner was (I bet none of them used whom) of the latest installment of America's favorite game show, American Idol - as though there is a celebrity shortage that television is working to correct.

Believe it or not, I resisted the urge, as I do with several urges. I also resisted the urge to see the winner of Tuesday's Dancing with the Stars, which has become more of a dancing show than a star show, but I digress.

It's beyond my scope of reasoning to figure out how hundreds of thousands of contestants can logically be broken down to eight or ten finalists without knowing the outcome beforehand. There is too much left to chance to imagine that the producers of a multi-million dollar franchise would leave so much to chance. But we (you) buy into it - by the millions, presumably. At least 20 million sheep will have tuned into Wednesday night's finale, while some of us were flipping between the Phillies versus the Reds and Oriole pitcher Jeremy Guthrie's epic struggle against the Yankees. Riveting television.

Alas, Guthrie had lost his battle long before the night was over and the Phillies would go down to an ignominious defeat at the hands of the Red Stockings.

But be sure, Fox would be the big winner, regardless of whomsoever was awarded the lucrative recording contract, because we know that nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public.