"God Bless the Child" on Idol?

The boy to beat is Scotty. I don't like country and I find his G.W.Bush grin and asymetrical microphone handling annoying, but I can see he has real talent, commercial potential, and is amazingly mature for his age.

I think Scotty has the biggest upside in terms of earning potential. He's talented and hard not to like.

James is similar but has more of an edge (yikes!). On Idol, that may well work against him eventually when push comes to shove.

BTW, I really liked Jame's take this week on "While My Guitar Gentrly Weeps". He is winning me over. Bravo!

PEople who long for the golden days of variety shows with live musical performances should take a few pills for their Idol allergies if they have them and give it a try the rest of this year. There really have not been any really bad performances all year by the finalists and most have been consistently quite good! Good stuff really, if your medication can help you deal with all the commercialism.

Hell, Ed Sullivan was pretty commercial in his day as well. Things have just evolved further down that road, for better or for worse.

Its nice to see true talent be discovered and evolve, even if it is done in a media circus like AI. Good for the contestants that tehy found a way to be discovered and have a career doing something that they are good at and that at least some people will appreciate!

Well said. The really good thing after watching this show this year is that I really feel good after seeing these talented young men and women pour their hearts out for a large audience, it is really great TV, funny, entertaining, heartfelt and some times just missing the mark but rarely boring. Sullivan was never this good! So far as the commercial part goes, who said capitalism is perfect, what is?

Cynics please forgive me and feel free to chime in :)

By far the most talent this year. Speaking of talent, Pia should still be standing. I think that Scotty and Lauren (she's 15 for heaven sake) are amazing. Haley and Paul are also very good.

never underestimate the power of 12 year old girls.