Our Critic Says: Stop Picking on Sanjaya!
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Hey! You! America! Leave the kid alone!
If the huge force mobilized against Sanjaya Malakar doesn't back off, I hope he wins the whole competition. I'm sorry to say that, Melinda Doolittle, but when someone on MySpace announces a hunger strike until Sanjaya is voted off, then I say things have gone too far.
Note to the MySpace protester: You know what? I might go on a hunger strike until you end yours. If I have to weigh my own need for nutrition against Sanjaya's need for support and tolerance, there's no question: No carbs for me.
I just don't get it. If a polling outfit could take Sanjaya's approval rating it would probably be lower than President Bush's, and yet why the hostility? Why the hysteria, the anger? He's a 17-year-old singing his heart out, and missing and sometimes quashing notes in the process, but he can dance, he can rock a little.
And every Wednesday morning the poor guy has to wake up with that hair falling over his eyes and the thought that probably millions of people are gossiping about his performance the night before and wishing he were the one about to be voted out.
I can't stop thinking of the last thoughts of the doomed narrator of Camus' The Stranger: "I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate." Now read it again, only imagine it's Sanjaya talking.
There's no need for hate, America. As Diana Ross herself said: "Sanjaya is love." It would probably be better, of course, if he were Justin Timberlake. Or even Nick Lachey. He's not. But there are plenty of boy-band careers that have been built on less talent.
Let Sanjaya be Sanjaya.
