Wednesday, April 9, 2008

American Idol Gives Back: Miley Cyrus, Billy Ray Cyrus, Robin Williams


Some kids from High School Musical 3?! as we come back from break, then back to Miley Cyrus, doing See You Again.

Okay, this is my new favorite performance from the night--it's just entertaining as all heck, it's more like a mini-drama than anything else. Then she and her dad Billy Ray Cyrus go back to where he's from, in Kentucky, to show the level of poverty in Appalachia.

Wow, Miley says 50% of the kids are below the poverty line; they meet a family that, as she says, live in "very difficult conditions". Wikipedia tells us about 12% of the U.S. lives under the poverty line, which is set at $21,200 for a family of four.

As Billy Ray says, what they witnessed in this home was "hope"--which is the hallmark of Americans. No matter how bad it is, we always think we will one day do better. The great thing about this country is, generally, we do.

Robin Williams shows up, Ryan pretends he's the winner of Russian Idol. He makes fun of Russia for a looooong time, which is ironic given most of this show is about making poor people in other parts of the world less foreign, and more connected to us.

He's wearing a ridiculous black and yellow outfit, at some point starts "singing" some fake Russian song. Really, it's hilarious how xenophobic his entire thing is, given the theme of the show.

It actually makes me wonder what the real Russian Idol winner would be like... really, FOX should've just shown us clips from American Idol competitions in other countries, it'd have been a lot more interesting.

And would have at least fit in with their we're one world, all in this together theme; while Williams' act just seems like something stale from 20 years ago when we were all up in arms about the Evil Empire.

Rob Schneider takes us to break.

You can donate at 1-877-436-5243 or https://www.idolaid.com/AidForm.asp.

Getty Images photo of Miley Cyrus

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

why even watch if all you're going to do is complain?

Anonymous said...

Nice play by play deusch bag, American Idol is not know as American Idol in other countries. Its named after the country, ie...British Idol. As Michael Scott would say....shut it..nerd!

Anonymous said...

I completely agree with you - Robin Williams' xenophobic shtick was out of place with the theme of the evening.

I was embarrased for him.

I didn't feel the comedians really added anything to the show - Bully Crystal and Miley Cyrus' exchange was awkward at best.

Actually, Rob Schneider had the funniest line of the night, when said said he thought Bono had enough money to fix the problem..
"Turns out he only had half"

Anonymous said...

My kids even think Robin Williams "yells too much and is weird", so yeah, the Billy Crystal thing was out of place too, but the rest of the show ROCKED! Shamid, are you taking howtobeamoronheckler 101 classes?