Rant

Once again, Hallmark has trapped me in its tangled web of lies. After the so-called "Thinking of You" debacle of Valentine's Day 2003, I told myself that I would no longer fall prey to the well-wishing conglomerate's sham sentimentality. But after watching the final 20 minutes of Plainsong, Sunday's Hallmark Hall of Fame movie on CBS, I suspect I've been hoodwinked into believing that we live in a fair and just world.

Yet, if this is indeed the case, I simply can't come to terms with the April 20 voting results on "American Idol," which identified the three best performers--all of them young, black women--as the worst and nearly dismissed the finest individual talent in the history of the program, Fantasia Barrino. Meanwhile, no-talent songturd John Stevens was left to wallow in the Capone-esque comfort of his apparent untouchability. I'd like to think this was just a consequence of collective bad taste, but there's a part of me that suspects it was the pervasive hand of the white man, trying to keep the sisters down. Whatever the truth, here's my Hallmark greeting for the masses: America, you suck.--Newt Briggs