WEDNESDAY, MAY 23: Jerry Springer is a softy. Even from a hundred feet away without benefit of binoculars or cameras, I could tell he was crying. It’s a strange feeling sitting in a theater knowing several million people are watching the same show from the comfort of their home. Imagine your most enthusiastic high school classmate and mulitply them by three thousand. Fill out the rest of the seats with B-level celebrities (yes, Teri Hatcher, you are a B-level star) and you’ve got yourself an audience. Since the show was live, it was thankfully concise. All the time in the world wouldn’t have helped those contestants figure out their Smokey Robinson dance moves anyway. Now in its sixth year, American Idol has a large roster of manufactured pop stars to exploit. In a few years, the only performers will be old-timers like Clay Aiken, but fortunately for me, Tony Bennett did a number and it was the only performance that led anyone to believe that we were watching a singing competition. The rest of the performances were aided by teleprompters and the best band a Vegas show could hope for. My cold indifference to the spectacle was only matched by that of Simon Cowell. For much of the show he was talking to friends and rarely even looked in the direction of the stage, often wandering off during commercial breaks. In honor of the show’s premise—self-imposed public humiliation—the highlight of the evening was when a over-eager technician landed an on-air face-plant in the middle of the stage. But I didn’t applaud when he fell. I only applaud when people drop trays. (SOC)