America's Got Talent -- For Kitsch

I'm gonna miss "America's Got Talent," but I wish they'd bring it back next summer instead of in the winter when it will be airing the same time as "American Idol." Cowell's summer cheese fest was gloriously silly -- I won't soon forget David Hasselhoff raving over a little girl who yodels, insisting she should have her own TV show so she can sing and yodel and dance "Or just tell stories." (Huh!) Too many of the acts were singers and the singers who were kiddies (like the yodeler) proved why Simon Cowell was right to insist on cutting off the age of Idol contestants so they weren't dealing with Shirley Temple wannabes. I thought the jugglers were good, I assumed the clog dancing fiddlers Celtic Spring would win, I wondered why a magic act that has toured the world and played for Presidents would be allowed on a show searching for fresh talent and I was delightfully horrified when the winner was an 11 year old girl who growled her way through songs by Janis Joplin and "Dreamgirls" in a faux adult manner that was truly awful. Any talent she might conceivably have wil be ruined by the success her karaoke mannerisms has got her now. But what does she care? She just won $1 million.