American Idol: What Kind of Competition Is This?

I should begin by saying that I rarely take issue with Entertainment Weekly, a well-respected popular culture magazine, which unlike celebrity-obsessed rags People and US Weekly covers the ins and outs of entertainment media through thoughtful and analytical stories/reviews. However, this week’s cover story, featuring American Idol contestant Adam Lambert, seemed strangely incompatible with EW‘s usual fare.

The thesis of Mark Harris’s cover story is that 27-year-old San Diego native Adam Lambert with his “mop of glam-rock cobalt-blue-on-dyed-black hair, his earring, his sneering, and his unambiguously ambiguous sexuality” has challenged and perhaps changed American Idol. While I don’t necessarily agree — after all, the show’s former winners and runners-up boast some variety, e.g., raspy pop singers, rockers, R&B vocalists, country crooners — I have no complaints about the comment. It’s what Harris continues to beat into the ground in the remainder of his article that seems irrelevant to his coverage of an up-and-coming musician.

“Is Idol ready for a gay winner?” This is the question that Harris harps on for nearly seven paragraphs. Harris, who is gay himself, points out several times in his piece that Adam Lambert has skirted questions about his sexuality with lines like, “I know who I am. I’m an honest guy, and I’m just going to keep singing.” Lambert is quoted similarly in the NY Daily News, saying if he wins, “I hope to be a role model for maybe that kid who…doesn’t fit the mold.”

True, the singer has never said, “I’m gay,” but according to many, he’s also certainly not making any attempt to mask his (homo)sexuality. For instance, note the online photos of him kissing other guys and dressing in drag, the manner in which he shimmies down the Idol staircase, the way he embraces his musical-theater background, and his flamboyant personal style (sequins, skinny jeans, nail polish, and green-glitter eyeliner).

Still, it is Lambert’s nonanswer that functions as the springboard for Harris’s inquiry. The show has come close to crowning a gay winner, the columnist points out, with runner-up Clay Aiken, “then closeted but somebody who even houseplants surmised was gay” (LOL!). Harris further points out that, unlike the other remaining contestants, Lambert has no “humanizing backstory” on Idol. For instance, we know that Kris Allen is married and that Danny Gokey is a widower, the latter a story that the talent show initially milked way too much. But as the EW column reveals, we know very little about Lambert. Harris quips, “He was apparently made by the hand of God and left in a basket backstage at Wicked where he was discovered, bestowed with a lifetime supply of black nail polish, and raised by musical-theater queens” (again, LOL!).

But if you think about it, other than the fact that he’s married, we don’t really know that much about Kris Allen–or Allison Iraheta, Anoop Desai, Matt Giraud, and Lil Rounds, for that matter. Maybe their personal lives, like Lambert’s, were just not as marketable as the unfortunately tragic ones of Danny Gokey or Scott McIntyre, the legally blind piano-player.

With this said, Mark Harris’s question — Is Idol ready for a gay winner? — continues to strike me as odd, especially since Lambert has made it this far and will likely win the competition. Could it be then that America understands, as Lambert seems to, that Idol is about singing and not sexual preference?

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