We're still nursing a punishing hangover, eight hours after drinking ourselves into oblivion following what was easily the most painful American Idol elimination in history. Yes, friends -- stalwart tween rocker Allison Iraheta, the kind of girl you just want to kick back with and share the six-pack you purchased for her while she waited anxiously in a 7-Eleven parking lot, was given the boot by "America." We use scare quotes because this was no America we know, or want to know, or want to live in. Watch now as we pull an Idol flag from our second-floor window, wrap an effigy of a Gokey-voting bible-thumper inside it, douse it with a Coca Cola cup filled with lighter fluid, and immolate it outside the Nokia Theater in a symbolic gesture of protest.
The elimination came, ironically enough, on Rock Week, Iraheta still flush with confidence from the night before, when she spread her rocker-chick wings and soared on "Cry Baby," before -- in a duet with Adam Lambert -- managing to inject some vitality into a tired Foghat song that we totally associate with Beginner Level on Guitar Hero 2. The hateful Danny Gokey, meanwhile, remains, having cast the judges under his Gokeyish spell from the very first time he sauntered into the audition room with a porcelain urn tucked under his arm, then proceeded to overturn its contents and perform a softshoe rendition of "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" over his recently departed wife's cremains.
Below, Danny explains how hilarious he finds it that he sucks, yet still managed to find a place in the Final Three in this clearly rigged competition: