Who Put The Y'all In 'Idol'?

"People in, say, Georgia aren't sitting on the front porches singing anymore," says Charles Reagan Wilson, director for the Center of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. "They're inside in the air-conditioning, watching cable like everybody else."

The music critic at the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer, David Menconi, who has seen Fantasia Barrino (winner), Aiken (runner-up) and four of this year's top 12 come from the state, doesn't think there's anything in the water.

"Two days [after the show], do you remember the songs performed? No, you remember the cutting remarks Simon made," Menconi says. "That's the real draw of the show, the drama of the moment.

"The people from here who have done well are just completely different; I can't see there being an identifiable sound or influence. I mean, Clay Aiken, a Broadway-style singer, and Fantasia, a real R&B belter? I don't see any connection. It's just a goofy, weird thing."

Bucky Covington, the country singer from Rockingham, N.C., who was voted off the show Tuesday night, was asked the Southern Question in a subsequent conference call last week. He didn't have a clue.

"I don't know if it's accents and attitudes that a lot of big cities aren't used to. . . . It's hard to put a finger on it," he said, before giving up. "It just seems to fall that way."

While it's falling, let's consider a few prosaic matters, such as math and demographics.

For one, as Menconi points out, "Idol" winners are picked from call-in votes, making it a popularity contest, not a talent show. Watch any week and you can be amazed, as we were last week, to see some talentless toad like Ace Young from Denver stay on the show, while the dearly beloved Mandisa (from Tennessee) is two weeks departed. Could Mandisa sing better than Ace? When she's gargling. Does it matter? Nope.

So who's casting all these Southern-based votes?

Let's look at the Nielsen numbers for some clues.

"Idol's" two episodes last week were the No. 1 shows in their time slots in every major market in America (save for San Antonio and Albuquerque), but lookit these shares down south! Greensboro-High Point, N.C.: 50 percent of all televisions turned on were watching "Idol"! Birmingham: 46 percent! Atlanta: 45! Charlotte: 37!

Well, no wonder, you say -- Southerners eat this show up like cornbread and buttermilk! They're packing the ballot box!