I?ve never been a great fan of ?American Idol,? and so was amazed at how many people were debating its results sometime last week. In fact, well before that, I was amazed at how many people in Metro Manila at least, if not the whole country, were watching the show as it drew to its climax. I know that because while walking the length of the Pagasa BLISS housing complex one night on my way to the SM mall, I could hear the booming sound of TV sets all tuned in to the program. The sound was bouncing off the walls of the buildings and producing that collective echo.

I had seen, or heard, that before only in the fights of Manny Pacquiao, in the Joseph Estrada impeachment trial, and at the opening of the NBN Senate hearings when Jun Lozada recounted his abduction. I knew ?American Idol? was popular, but I never knew it was that popular. I had always assumed that it rose and fell hereabouts with the rise and fall of Filipino (of all hues) contestants in them. I understood that they had fallen by the wayside one by one long before the hour of reckoning, but, lo and behold, there was our whole neighborhood glued to the show anyway.

I?ve never been a great fan of the show, and in fact have always harbored some misgivings about it. Bob Lefsetz puts his finger on exactly what?s wrong with it:

??American Idol? has the highest ratings of any weekly series, it?s the most talked-about show. [But] wait a minute here ... are these performers no more than cardboard? The classic rockers were built on their own material. There were no song doctors. It was directly from their heart to yours .... If you?re just singing someone else?s song, you?re driving the BMW. Someone else can get inside and take the wheel instantly...

?Simon?s smart enough to know it?s not about his fame, it?s about the dough. TV delivers momentary record sales that he can profit from. Is this the game you?re in? Earning a golden ticket to instant fame that will be taken away from you on your way to the 7-11, transforming you from a customer to an employee? If you want to have a long career, write your own material. Be different, not the same.

?People lose sight of the truth. The truth is that ... the program [?American Idol?] is the star, not the talent.?

I myself have had the impression ?Idol? was committed to the dumbing down of popular music. Of course, some will say that is redundant, popular music is dumb. To a point, yes. I am not that given to nostalgia or looking at the past with rose-colored glasses that I can?t see how a great deal of the ?oldies? was crap, some songs not quite incidentally (including Sinatra ?standards?) having lines that will send today?s women, feminists or not, on the warpath. (?Devil Woman? is chief of them.) And I do know that the Monkees were a manufactured product, several guys recruited on the strength of a formula for a successful band, though surprisingly they turned out to be good?and successful. But all this said, I remember as well that the 1960s had the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel, who rescued ?popular? from its association with witless.

But the Top 40 pales in comparison with the resoluteness with which ?Idol? is carrying out the mayhem. And that is probably because of the combined effect of pop and TV. Doobie-do meets boobie-tube, and that?s double the trouble. ?Idol? isn?t just killing off originality, it?s killing off creativity. Whatever creativity there is is limited to interpretation. How many goddamn ways can you interpret Dolly Parton? As it is, you?re not just judged on how you sound but on how you look. But I?ll leave outraged (and aging) rockers to growl some more at it.

What particularly dismays me about it is its potential to stunt local popular music. It threatens to bring us back to days before Original Pilipino Music when performance and not composition was the Filipino musician?s best bet for success?or, forget success, for making a living. We?ve never had problems with performance: I?ve always said Cecile Licad and Lea Salonga were not flukes, given the deep well of musical talent here. You can?t get to the top of the music pile in this country by just being excellent, you?ve got to be exceptional. Our problem has never been playing, it has always been composing. It has never been contention, it has always been invention. We did have a flood of OPM once, the dam bursting from decades of repressed creativity, but that has since gone down to a trickle. We?re not just being re-invaded by foreign material but by foreign artists!

?American Idol? and its local versions could not have come at a worse time. At the very least, that?s so because it runs counter to the natural direction of media today, which is interactivity. I?ve always thought the digital age, which has produced the phenomenon of blogs and allowed Internet users to access virtually any radio station on Earth, would lead to an explosion of personal expression and spark true world music. Maybe it will still do, in the future. But right now ?American Idol? seems like the revenge of TV, dictating passivity if not lethargy, and conformity if not uniformity.

That?s so moreover because over the last few years, there?s been some kind of musical renaissance, or at least resurgence, being initiated by the kids in particular. It?s almost like the 1960s, when virtually every kid knew how to play the guitar and wanted to join a band. Except that then the kids were content to do covers; today they strut out their own stuff. You see these small garage bands sprouting all over the place and doing gigs in dives largely for free, and you wonder if that isn?t one shiny silver lining in these dark and desperate times. And you want to bury all that under this rubble? Some idols are worth worshipping, others are not.

Like Moses coming down the mountain, you kind of feel not a little betrayed and want to hurl the tablets at the golden calf.