'Idol' Has Seen Enough of Haley

By Lisa de Moraes
Thursday, April 12, 2007

"American Idol" lost its naughty little thing last night -- Haley Scarnato was sent packing after receiving the fewest votes from viewers.

We, and the "American Idol" camera, have taken our last long look at Haley, from her spike-heeled shoes, up her gorgeous legs, past her hot pants, her halter tops, her dimpled cheeks and her flingable hair.

Though judge Simon Cowell thoroughly approved of this week's outfit, her Skimpy Clothing strategy finally failed her. In the end, she was outmaneuvered by Phil Stacey's Talk About My Adorable New Baby strategy. Haley and Phil were the bottom two vote-getters this week, but Phil survives to sing country tunes next week with Martina McBride.

Last night marked the return of the one-hour results show. And you could see why. The program was jammed full with a little girl at the Los Angeles Farmers Market telling show host Ryan Seacrest how much she loves Sanjaya Malakar's new facial hair.

Akon waved his arm and sang a tune.

Ford Motor Co. showed its first horror music video, in which the Idolettes morphed into one another.

Simon Cowell went to Africa to demonstrate that, as Ryan Seacrest says, one of those two bulges in his chest is a heart. Oh good, a surly white man come to save Africa -- haven't we seen this movie before?

Tony Bennett, who was a guest coach on the show earlier in the season, got humiliated by the judges in a canned bit that clearly made the audience uncomfortable -- he's such a nice old man.

Then there was all that extra footage they'd shot of the Idolettes gushing over this week's guest judge Jennifer Lopez -- "She's totally down to earth!" "The coolest person!" "You could tell she really wanted to help us!"

After which we got to see all the extra footage of Lopez saying the same things over and over again that she'd told them the night before, about feeling the passion and not worrying too much about the notes.

She then demonstrated with a song from her album.

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PBS will add interviews with Hispanic and Native American veterans of World War II during breaks or at the end of each hour of Ken Burns's 14 1/2 -hour documentary on the war, after Hispanic organizations complained that the documentary ignored their community's contributions.

Burns has agreed to hire a Latino producer to work on the additional material in time for the scheduled September debut of "The War."

Burns says the documentary was never intended as a comprehensive look at WWII. It does not include interviews with historians or academics. Instead, it zooms in on the wartime stories of people in four communities: Sacramento; Luverne, Minn.; Waterbury, Conn.; and Mobile, Ala.

"We made a pact with ourselves not to seek one group or type of race or ethnicity, and to focus on the experiences or the battles," Burns told The TV Column about the process of looking for veterans to interview on film.

More than 500 people were interviewed, of whom about 40 were filmed, five or six of whom are featured prominently in the project and the rest appearing to a lesser degree.

Burns says each episode starts with a title card that says, "The Second World War was fought in thousands of places, too many for any one accounting. 'The War' is simply an exploration of a handful of stories told by individuals in just four American towns."

Even so, when Hispanic groups learned several months ago that Burns had not interviewed Latino veterans for the project, they began complaining to PBS and demanding that the film be changed.

"Their initial line on this was that his stories were guided by the four geographic places . . . and he just threaded stories around them," Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, told The TV Column. "And as a result, no Latinos or Hispanics were included, or Native Americans. And yet there were several stories with African Americans and Asian American veterans."

Murguia said at least 500,000 Hispanic soldiers fought in World War II -- "a disproportionate representation" -- adding, "We also had a disproportionate number of congressional Medal of Honor recipients to number of soldiers in service."

Yesterday, Hispanic groups heralded PBS's decision as a major win. Alex Nogales, president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, said: "This was something the entire Latino community could get behind. It's noncontroversial -- another example of us being completely ignored."

Burns, Nogales said, "comes from the East Coast. His experience is not one with Latinos -- it is of the white/black experience. . . . That's been the problem with PBS as a whole. They don't think of it."

Instead of making Burns redo his film, PBS has agreed to create the additional material that focuses on stories of Latino and Native American veterans of the war.

"The War," which has already been completed, will not be altered; the additional material will be added to "the footprint of the series," PBS Senior Vice President John Wilson, who was involved in the talks, told The TV Column.

By that he means the space the program occupies on PBS's schedule, but not the actual program.

The new narrative will be included during the broadcast of the series as well as in the DVD, on the Web site and in educational outreach materials.

PBS President Paula Kerger says the solution was Burns's idea.

"I fully respect an artist's right to tell his story, and frankly, if he did not want to do this, I would not have forced him to do this," she told the Associated Press.

Burns says the campaign by Hispanic organizations to get the additional material into the broadcast "footprint" is "perfectly understandable."

"In a funny way the Second World War is about identity politics," he told The TV Column.

"I think what you begin to understand when you take this tack is, the responses people give [in the documentary] -- crying in their first day of combat, crying remembering their first day of combat -- their responses aren't Japanese American or Irish American or Hispanic American. . . . They're human."

The concerns over the project, he said, have been raised mostly by people "who haven't seen a single frame of the film."

Burns calls the controversy and ensuing press coverage a "win-win situation."

"In the end this is not distracting -- it's pointing a big neon sign saying: This is coming down the pike."

Burns says he embraces all those Big Neon Signs. Like when the press wrote articles about how dumb PBS was to have tentatively scheduled the debut of "The War" on the same night as the Primetime Emmy Awards (it's been moved one week).

Likewise, articles wondering whether adult language uttered by soldiers will cause viewers to file complaints and provoke the Federal Communications Commission, which has deemed the words to be obscene, to issue hefty fines against PBS stations broadcasting "The War."

Burns called that issue a "non-starter."

" 'Saving Private Ryan' . . . has a dozen uses of the f-word and nothing happened," Burns said of ABC's 2004 broadcast of the Tom Hanks flick.

"This is a documentary in which there are three instances in 14 1/2 hours of questionable language."

Burns added: "You know what's obscene -- war is obscene."