Y -O- Y, X Factor?

I'm devastated. Rachel Crow, the best little act on competitive talent TV, was voted off of X Factor tonight by the judges' inability to do their job. I hate to point fingers, but Nicole Scherzinger was in the hot seat and she totally blew it by abdicating her responsibility as a judge. She just couldn't take the heat of being the deciding vote, and copped out by deliberately voting for Marcus in order to force to a tie. That meant last night's call-in votes became the tie-breaker, and that sent Rachel home.

What's patently unfair about this is that last night's votes had nothing to do with tonight's performances. Those votes already determined who would be in the bottom two tonight and would sing for their lives. It was up to the judges to decide which of those two would move on the semi-finals next week and who would be sent home. By failing to vote on the merits, Nicole corrupted the system and in the process sent home the true shining star of the entire competition.

Not that Marcus didn't perform well - he did.  But his star factor is nil compared to Rachel's. Delivering a great performance isn't enough. X Factor is about discovering an act that can sell records, and eventually concert tickets, merchandise and even movies. Even if Marcus is capable of achieving this, which I doubt, he will never have the natural gift for it that Rachel does. She simply radiates with it.

Rachel has been victimized by a poorly conceived judging process. None of the judges should be able to manipulate the system to avoid responsibility for voting. Hello, that's their job.

That the judging system is able to be manipulated is an inherent flaw that must rectified. The current system puts too much pressure on the last judge, who often ends up in the position of casting the deciding vote alone and in full view of everyone. To rectify this, the judges' votes should be cast anonymously using a display system that shows the results without attributing the votes to any one of the judges. This might be similar to the judging system on America's Got Talent -- but without the attribution. This would alleviate the extreme pressure on any one judge to cast the final, fateful vote.

But even that won't help Rachel Crow, whose moment in the X Factor sun has come and gone. I am disgusted. I can only hope that she gets a multi-million dollar recording contract that makes X Factor look like the amateur hour that it is.

Don't cry, Rachel. You're going to look back on this one day really soon and realize that you were destined for much bigger things than Simon Cowell and his merry band of wimps.