What if They Filibustered American Idol?     5/12/2005

Washington, D.C. – Concerned Women for America’s (CWA’s) chief counsel Jan LaRue, with tongue firmly in cheek, compared the Senate Democrats’ refusal to give the President’s judicial nominees an up or down vote to the Fox hit TV show, American Idol, in her description of this nightmarish scenario:

Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson, the regular judges on Fox’s American Idol, were replaced for one night by none other than Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), Chuck Schumer (D-New York) and the Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada). If you think Simon is cold, you should have seen these guys.

There was only one contestant on the show. Even though he was a smash hit, millions in the audience were denied the right to vote on the performance of an Italian-American singer named Francis Albert Sinatra.

REID: Why is Fox picking a fight by sending us contestants like this? Why are they refusing to move on to less controversial contestants? They want to make us look like obstructionists. … He’s just giving a big wet kiss to Italians on the far right.

AUDIENCE: Shut-up and let us vote!

SCHUMER: Well, his voice is clearly out of the mainstream. The extreme way he expressed the lyric—the extreme snapping of the fingers on his extreme right hand—he’s sending an extremist message to the far-right-handed…He’s obviously pandering to the far-right extremists who want to force extreme music on the rest of us in the mainstream. I mean, how extreme—“The Lady is a Tramp”—a not-so-subtle extremist attack on women’s rights.

AUDIENCE: Shut-up and let us vote!!

KENNEDY: We fought the, ah, Revolutionary War, or, ah, the Civil War or some, ah, war, I didn’t fight but heard about it, so that all singers would finally be protected by the Constitution. But this nation will never be America until we free ourselves from the domination of Italian singers… I have here in my mainstream left hand the lyrics of songs this Sinatra person has sung that reveal a narrow intolerance for the rights of others… That’s Life is clearly an attack on choice.

To read Jan LaRue’s column in its entirety, click here.

For Information Contact:
Demi Bardsley
(202) 309-5978
media.cwfa.org

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