Beautiful Losers

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Seacrest's description may be self-serving and creepy--one imagines herds of wannabe Mariahs staggering through the streets, Dawn of the Dead--style, answering AI's irresistible call--but it's hard to argue with. According to the show, nearly half a million people have auditioned so far. But if the auditions have become the closest thing America has to a national-service program and yet so much of the show is devoted to the awfulness of the applicants, then American Idol's message is simple and unambiguous: America, you stink.

So why would 35.5 million Americans tune in to agree? The AI auditions tell Americans as a country--with our massive army and troves of Olympic medals--that it's O.K. to root for the overdog, because, face it, the underdog is usually called that for good reason. But they also make us, as individuals, feel better about our own place in the pack. The American ideal of opportunity for all, which AI embodies, may be a blessing or a myth. But either way, it can also be oppressive. Because the corollary is that if you don't achieve your dreams, it's your own fault--you had your chance.

After winning the first season, Kelly Clarkson took the stage to sing her first single: "Some people wait a lifetime/ For a moment like this." She was right. In fact, most of her audience is still waiting and probably always will. That's where the audition episodes come in: they show us that failure is not the end. Because of all the things that most bad auditioners have in common--loud clothes, a taste for the oeuvre of Celine Dion--the greatest is faith. Insulted and denied, they leave believing that the judges are idiots and fame is around the next corner. That is how AI earns the American half of its title. It is a Whitmanian collection of strivers, sounding their barbaric yawps over the roofs of the world, dreaming of their own Clarkson coronation, ready to wait a lifetime, if need be, for a moment like that.