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Foretelling a Fortune

Is it bragging if you foretell the future with perfect success? I am pleased to announce two months and a week ago I made a prediction here about this year’s American Idol contestants and, in the end, I was right. Peering into tomorrow is a practiced knack and here’s why I was right about who won and who finished second.

TAYLOR HICKS Taylor HicksAmerican Idol, as I predicted, is your new Idol but he was never a favorite of judge Simon Cowell.

That is a dangerous thing because Simon can kill a contestant he doesn’t like and for the first six weeks of the show, Simon took every opportunity he had to slay Taylor’s chances of winning it all. What Simon failed to recognize — but that the rest of us knew and loved — is that Taylor Hicks wasn’t just a great singer and musician, he was one of us. He was older. He had a bit of a gut. His chin was doubled. He was grey haired.

We loved him because he wasn’t about surface beauty or false charity. Taylor Hicks is a real talent, nobly divined and of Great Spirit. He sweats honor and compassion. He controls the stage. He sings with grit and a passion missing in today’s popular recorded music. Taylor will always be better live than on tape but that’s the beauty of the man. He transcends the faked by being human in the moment and he cannot be artificially captured.

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Top American Idol Stars and Fakes

I have watched and generally enjoyed every season of American Idol.  I did not believe Fantasia deserved to win but she lucked out by finding herself stuck in a bland year of contestants and so she won by default.  Her career after her win demonstrates the failure of the American Idol producers to pick a winner beyond Tuesday nights.

Here is a quick examination so far of my top three stars and my least favorite three fakes from this year’s competition. The other contestants I do not mention are just doing time until they’re tossed off the show.

STARS
Taylor HicksAmerican Idol must win American Idol because he is the most interesting, most talented and the most compelling musician of the current crop of contenders.

Because of his immense talents and abilities he will not win.  American Idol is not about talent and perfection, it is instead merely about marketability.  Marketability means selling millions of records to teenage girls who want to swoon with Puppy Love as they hand over their weekly allowance to iTunes and Tower Records.  Taylor’s singing has depth and emotion and great human reverberance.

He is technically supreme.  If American Idol had any guts they’d promote him more and allow him to win and make the American Idol niche deeper and wider from its hoary teenaged core.  You can listen to Taylor Hicks here and my favorite song is “Heart and Soul.”

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Please Burn an American Flag

Hillary Rodham Clinton has agreed to co-sponsor a bill by Utah Republican Sen. Bob Bennett that would make it illegal for anyone to intimidate any other person by burning the flag, to burn someone else’s flag or to desecrate the flag on federal property. At the same time, however, Clinton continues to oppose efforts to amend the Constitution to prohibit flag burning.

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One Nation, Under God, In Divisible Common Cents

by Tammy Tillotson

February 1, 2002

Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto – “In God is our trust.”
—-Francis Scott Key, The Star Spangled Banner

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that posting isolated religious texts and symbols in any public building is unconstitutional. The government and public schools primarily choose to remain neutral on the issue of religion, because advocating one specific religion in comparison to another would violate every American’s Constitutional right to freedom of religion.

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