ABC/Eric McCandless
Ever since Ada Vox had to be placed in the American Idol top 10 by the judges after failing to win America’s vote, viewers have complained that it was because people just couldn’t handle a drag queen on the show. They made the same complaint when she was eliminated on Sunday’s episode. But now, American Idol season two runner-up Clay Aiken insists she was eliminated for a different reason.
In a column for the Huffington Post, Clay, who’s openly gay but wasn’t when he was on the show, says Ada was eliminated because she simply wasn’t good enough.
“Someone needs to be real here,” he writes. “Ada Vox wasn’t voted off because she is a drag queen and she wasn’t voted off because Adam Sanders (her alter ego) is a gay man. She was voted off because she was not the best voice on the show.”
“Let me be clear: Vox is a star. And Vox can sing…Her performances of ‘And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going’ and ‘Circle of Life’ were rousing spectacles but they were not master classes in singing…And Ada Vox, entertaining performer though she doubtless is, was not the best singer. No, ma’am.”
Clay also suggests that Ada simply wasn’t able to motivate supporters to vote for her.
“I’m willing to bet that 80 percent of those lamenting Ada Vox’s elimination didn’t even watch her performance until the next day on YouTube, which means they certainly didn’t vote for her,” he writes.
Ultimately, Clay predicts that Ada “will likely eclipse whoever the eventual winner will be” in terms of success, and acknowledges, “Because of her willingness to stand in the line of fire for a cause bigger than herself…even when she’s not the best singer — she deserves it.”
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