Tonight’s results show was a two-hour telethon – Idol Gives Back – in which money was raised to help children in poverty both here in the US and in Africa. The images of the children were haunting. We live in supposedly the richest country in the world, yet in eastern Kentucky, only 5 families of the 233 in the school profiled there could afford to pay the $1.50 per day lunch prices. How well we take care of our young and are old are reflections on us a society, and the picture painted certainly wasn’t pretty.
Amid the backdrop of that, we were treated to performances and appearances by entertainers from every genre possible, including one dead person. Yes, Elvis was in the building 😉 Similar to the duet Natalie Cole recorded with her father, Nat King Cole, Celine Dion performed a duet with Elvis Presley. That was pretty wild.
I’m not going to even try to list all of the folks that participated in tonight’s show. I haven’t looked but supposedly all of the performances can be downloaded from iTunes. If I heard Ryan correctly, some $34 million was raised before the show ended. Co-hosting tonight’s show was Ellen DeGeneres, who pledged $100,000 and challenged other rich people (she said she watches AI with them 🙂 ) to do the same.
Some 70 million people voted last night. The surprise that host Ryan Seacrest kept alluding to during the show was that no one was going home tonight. Next week, two contestants will be eliminated.
I had expected that a two-hour show would be boring, but it wasn’t. Kudos to AI for putting on a good show and to all the entertainers for participating.
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VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 