On my list of guilty pleasures, watching American Idol on television is definitely somewhere in the top five. After an eight-month hiatus, the Fox Television sensation featuring celebrity judges Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell is finally back. Yay!

The early episodes of American Idol are the best because by the time the singing competition is narrowed down to eight or ten finalists, let’s face it, they all have incredible singing talent and are being eliminated based on personality and looks. During the first few episodes of each season, however, we get to witness the witless as they discover for the first time in their lives that they don’t have the singing talent that their mothers convinced them they possess. It makes for some incredibly entertaining television as these Idol wannabees exit the preliminary auditions without their precious yellow ticket to Hollywood.

My favorite part of these early rounds is when the eliminated singers get to voice their reactions to rejection. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one person say something like, “Well, I guess I just wasn’t quite good enough to make it to the next level of the competition.”

No, the response is usually some kind of spin of twisted denial such as, “They just couldn’t handle my talent, it was too much for them” or “When I record my album and it shoots straight to number one, then they’ll be sorry they didn’t take me” or the classic “They’re so wrong. I can sing ten times better than Carrie Underwood.”

It sounds mean, but I love hearing the spin of people in denial of their own faults and shortcomings. I spent time as a court reporter for a newspaper and got to hear the most amazing excuses and lame denials imaginable. My favorite recurring line was “The other car came out of nowhere.”

The lesson here is that when you’re driving near nowhere, look out for oncoming traffic.

I think it is a particularly American phenomenon, this ability to spin the truth in order for the end result to be more palatable—a spin that doesn’t leaving us responsible for a bad situation. We will even go so far as to claim that something that is clearly unfortunate is somehow a positive thing. I don’t know if this is the end result of teaching an entire generation that self-esteem is more important than effort and self-improvement or what. Maybe if some of these people had been cut from their little league soccer teams they would have grown up with the ability to take bad news and personal responsibility a little better. Who knows?

On the local level, we’ve recently witnessed officials from Appalachian State trying to spin their way out of the unfortunate eviction of the Appalachian Cultural Museum from its longtime home on University Hall Drive in Boone. The move is being made to make room for ASU’s new Institute of Health and Human Services. Now homeless, the Cultural Museum’s staff was told they would be given the opportunity to move their priceless collections and exhibits to “various locations around campus.”

ASU associate vice chancellor for cultural and public affairs Lynn Drury optimistically spun, “We also will make an assessment of other university buildings to determine where we might permanently display portions of the collection. (I)n effect, the entire campus will become a ‘living’ cultural museum.”

That’s great unless you want to see more than one exhibit at a time, which is what exactly what visitors to the current museum can do. To solve that problem, the university plans to publish a brochure so visitors can find various exhibits around campus. For the time being, that brochure can point people to the Old Belk Library where the university plans to put the museum into temporary storage.

On Tuesday, January 24th, director of the Appalachian Cultural Museum Chuck Watson was informed by the University that the museum must be out of its building by April 1st. Watson stated that the museum and its gift shop will stay open as long as it can before moving. There is no word yet on where the museum, its exhibits and employees will end up.

On the national level, the ability to go into spin mode has reached new levels with the Bush Administration and its supporters and apologists. With the recent disclosures about government wiretapping of United States citizens, pro-Bush spinsters have responded with their typical bumper sticker mentality by saying as one “If you haven’t done anything wrong, you shouldn’t mind a bit of spying on your household.”

This is, of course, from the same people who brought you, “Opposing the war in Iraq only gives comfort to our enemies and endangers our troops.”

Excuse me folks, but the freedom to speak out for or against this or any war is protected by the United States Constitution. Living free from the prying eyes and ears of our government is also protected by the Constitution. If that’s not good enough for you, I suggest you pack your bags and move to some country that doesn’t value freedom and the rights of the individual as much as my country does.

The thing that really irks me about this current administration is the way it has taken advantage of things since 9/11. Our freedoms are being purged in the name of Homeland Security and very few people are speaking up about it. Cheney, Rumsfeld and others sincerely believe that if we are not the target of another terrorist attack, they can look at the American people in the collective eye and say, “See, all these draconian measures are working.” And if we are the target of another attack, those same guys will turn to us and say, “See, we told you so.”

Now that’s what I call spin.

Somewhere in America, the founding fathers are spinning in their graves.