How We Media can save us from Britney Spears

Last night while watching the NAACP’s Image Awards, I began thinking about the connections between my personal guilty pleasure, American Idol, and my professional passion, We Media. When the preternaturally talented Jordin Sparks took the stage for an Aretha Franklin tribute, I felt some strange sense of connection with Sparks, the way you feel about someone you went to high school with who is now famous.

Maybe that’s because I did know-her-when: Watching all of American Idol Season Six, I saw Sparks rise from her first audition to her win over beat-box-boy Blake Lewis in Hollywood last spring. In other words, I felt involved in her stardom. And even though I never pick up the phone to vote for Idol contestants (it’s not a civic duty, is it?), I liked Sparks and felt she earned her stardom: America literally did vote her into “office.”

This morning, Britney Spears crossed my mind (I was contemplating working mothers who have breakdowns,) and my first thought was: “Who elected her to be a star?” Then I laughed, remembering that, in fact, entertainment superstars are not elected. All of a sudden that seemed wrong: If you put “unelected” in front of anything — judges, superdelegates — they start to sound a little nefarious.

When I think of Britney Spears prancing around in her sexy school-girl outfit in Baby One More Time I do think she’s somewhat nefarious — especially when compared to the restrained teen-aged beauty of Jordin Sparks.

That’s when I started thinking about We Media: Could it be that when Americans get to vote on their pop stars guided by expert advice,(read: pro-am collaboration,) they choose talented, often-beautiful people but avoid super-sexed icons? Of course there are have various minor scandals about Idol contestants with their breasts bared (poor Antonella Barba discovered the dark side of the connected society,) but when I think about the American Idol winners and runners-up as a group, they are a notably wholesome bunch.

So is there a moral here? That the way to clean up entertainment is to make it participatory? All I know is, when it comes to teen-aged stars, I’d vote for Sparks over Spears any day.