American Idol – Paula Abdul Is Redeeming Herself? Is This An April Fool’s?

It may be mildly surprising to those who know me (or think they do), but as a general rule I’m sort of fond of Ted Casablanca… or at least his blog The Awful Truth. It serves its particular purpose well, though whether or not that is a worthwhile purpose, and what exactly that purpose is might be ideas that are still up for grabs.

But, this morning, amid the millions of April Fool’s goofs, Ted had positive things to say specifically about Paula Abdul. Now I’m not sure if he’s lost his mind, or if it’s one more bit of nonsense to add to the day’s “pranks.”

The brief article hits you right out of the gates when we get this -

“Paula‘s acting comprehensibly for once! Holy crap. She’s actually doling out valid criticism…”

She’s what? I don’t know what to make of this at all. Here I was thinking she was, even for her, on a downward spiral of inanity. It’s gotten to the point that I literally can’t listen to her, because whenever she starts talking all I hear is the teacher from Charlie Brown. Last night, among all the other drivel, she gave out the bizarre “praise” to Scott that she was most proud of him… and then she actually made a stab at pausing for dramatic effect, so that she could make sure everyone was clear — not because of his challenge, but because he makes her forget about his challenge. Well, and then she sort of rambled aimlessly a bit. I’m sorry, I know Paula was trying to somehow distance herself from the obvious, but how is this nonsense actually different from saying, “I’m more proud of you Scott… well, Dude, because you’re the blind guy.”

Yeah, it’s not.

Beyond that, as one comment on Ted’s article pointed out, the only thing that really stands out as different this year is that Paula and Kara are apparently sharing a Sound Like You Know Things About Singing Word A Day calendar. Neither one of them can stop saying vibrato, register, or falsetto, and they throw in a few others bits of nonsense every third word as well. The result is that neither one of them have said anything useful or meaningful yet, and Paula still just drools all over nearly every performance. She has managed to put forward some less than glowing comments this season, but you’ll notice that has been exclusively following Randy and Kara giving negative comments of their own.

Ted goes on to wonder, “what’s changed with our fave formerly foggy-headed femme…” That’s as surprising as anything, because unless we’re watching different shows Paula has looked nothing if not more and more drunk with every episode. Last night in particular made it almost impossible to describe her without using some variant on “foggy-headed.”

On the other hand, Ted apparently has an Idol insider who actually answered the above inquiry, and is quoted in Ted’s article as saying, “They’re regulating her input.” And Ted could hardly be more on track (or more obvious) when he wonders, “What could they possibly mean?”

Though Ted throws out a few harmless possibilities, and tells us his Idol informer wouldn’t budge toward a clarification (though he was apparently smiling when he said it), I think the less harmless possibilities are a bit more on track. Her input of what? Valium? Or, does “input” just mean someone is telling her what to say, who to like, and writes “vibrato” on the back of her hand?

Is she actually smarter than we think? Well, she couldn’t be dumber than we think, but come on Ted… really?