"American Idol" Shows Congress How It's Done

Fox has gone Democrat.

American Idol used to represent the cocksure, the divisive, the draconian.

It used to be a show in which grim reality was represented by the Grim Reaper himself, Simon Cowell,

Suddenly, the new series, the tenth, came over all strangely reasonable.

Suddenly, the new panelists, Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez, appeared to be on the same drugs that, some dared to suggest (and she denied), former panelist Paula Abdul favored.

The pink, fluffy drugs. The drugs of happy reason. The drugs that make you believe the music business is a place where talent conquers all and Jennifer Hudson really didn't come in the middle of the pack as an Idol contestant.

The Idol auditions began in New Jersey.

Lopez, a remarkable presence on camera in movies such as Maid in Manhattan and no less impactful in these hotel room auditions, began by sticking a large Q-Tip into the corpse of Cowell.

"I'm not in the business of crushing spirit," she said, just as the crushingly dated opening music faded.

Tyler and Lopez were chaperoned by the veteran producer and Idol panelist, Randy Jackson.

Once they had performed their first execution -- a sweet, but stunned girl from the Ivory Coast -- they came to accept that, though the politics of reality TV was a dirty business, they wouldn't allow themselves to offer up ratings-tickling invective.

Lopez hugged a local Jersey girl who began to cry just because she was in the presence of Jennifer Lopez. It's called communing with the voters.

Tyler, meanwhile, allowed his lips to descend in an expression that resembled a Supreme Court judge wondering whether he entirely understood counsel's argument.

Neither would stoop to dismissive arrogance, though Tyler seems not to be entirely immune from a little rock star/senator leering.

In these auditions, the producers dedicate all of the screen time to those who have the slightest of chances and those who ought to be making insane YouTube videos.

Like for every politician, the test for Tyler and Lopez lay in whether they could deal with the awful, as much as whether they could spot potential.

In this, they showed skills.

Ryan Seacrest hugged and stroked the families outside the audition room.

Inside, the judges were determined to grope for consensus in the face of shrieking provocation from, for example, a very nice but horribly dissonant health care provider. She was 23 and she wasn't happy.

After an hour, you suddenly realized what it was that Tyler and Lopez can contribute to any revival of American Idol: they can sing.

It sounds so simplistic, but, for the first time, two of the judges are people who have enjoyed huge success doing the one thing this show is (theoretically) about: singing.

Tyler and Lopez replaced the likes of Ellen DeGeneres and Cowell, neither of whom has too much experience inspiring other human beings to lose their tops and jiggle their bottoms at a concert.

So they actually might have something refreshing to say.

As small people with big voices and large people with truck horns passed before them, Tyler, Lopez and Jackson navigated their emotions with skill and added to each other's opinions.

It was not unlike the recording session of We Are The World, one in which the legendary producer Quincy Jones put up a large sign outside the studio door telling everyone to leave their egos behind.

When Lopez liked a 16-year-old's skirt, Tyler helpfully added that she had "just the right amount showing."

Several auditioners clearly had John Boehner as their model of persuasion, making one imagine that the producers must have hired the floor-wipers from the New Jersey Nets to keep the podium dry.

The tears flowed like curse words on Jersey Shore but, though Lopez wavered at times, the Idol Congress stayed resolutely decisive, democratic and meritocratic.

If they were to be swayed, there had to at least be substance. Looks wouldn't be enough if you couldn't deliver the hooks.

Substance matters.

That was the strange lesson from the first Idol Congress. Had its members bothered watching, the idle Congress might just have learned something.