I haven’t been watching American Idol this season, mostly because whoever wins is just going to have one mediocre song on the radio before fading back into obscurity and mall tours. Anyway, apparently things are actually getting interesting on the show for once because one of the contestants, Jermaine Jones, is getting kicked off the show for lying about his criminal past as well as lying about a supposedly absentee father. TMZ reports:
We’re told one of the incidents involved violence, which was particularly troublesome to producers. He also lied to cops by giving them fake names both times he was arrested. Idol sources tell us … Jermaine will appear on the show tomorrow night before he is sent packing. Over the last few days, we’ve been reporting that Jermaine told producers his father abandoned him 10 years ago, but his dad called TMZ and called B.S. on his son, saying they see each other regularly. Jermaine began tweeting that he never told producers about his dad abandoning him. We’re told the producers — who knew Jermaine had made the statement — became generally suspicious and began looking more closely at his background, and that’s what led to the revelation of his criminal history.
It should be noted that if this were any other reality TV show, all of this would have been swept under the rug like so much dirt, because let’s face it, the overwhelming majority of people insipid enough to actually want to be on reality TV need a crack team of editors and producers to make them seem even slightly interesting. Which is why you need someone with an actual personality and back story on the show to make it seem like not every single reality TV contestant is a vapid, shallow attention whore. Some of them are just awful.