Abdul can't talk? Riiiight

PASADENA, Calif. — The folks at Fox had the temerity — or, perhaps, the sense of humor — to tell TV critics that "American Idol" judge Paula Abdul couldn't meet with us Tuesday morning because she "has an eye infection."

It was an excuse that ranked right up there with the dog ate my homework.

Apparently, this eye infection developed sometime between when Jay Leno was tossing softball questions at her — and Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson — on "The Tonight Show" Monday night, and the time when members of the Television Critics Association would get a chance to question her about her "Idol" sex scandal last year.

Hey, even her fellow judges weren't buying it. Asked what had so suddenly happened to Abdul's eye, Cowell said, "It fell out."

"Yeah," Jackson said. "Which one? She had to put it back in."

And they laughed.

Don't get me wrong. If I were Abdul, I wouldn't want to answer those questions, either. After all, Fox's "investigation" into the incident didn't clear her of charges that she had an affair with one-time finalist (and sometime Utahn) Corey Clark. It simply determined that the fact that 43-year-old Abdul and 25-year-old Clark were fooling around didn't change the outcome of the show.

Or, as one critic put it, "Is that the standard — as long as they don't actually do it on stage, everything else is OK?"

With a straight face, Fox Entertainment president Peter Ligouri replied, "The investigation was geared toward the sanctity of the competition."

Ah, me. I'm still trying to control my laughter.

It was, of course, a ridiculous whitewash. And made it patently clear that neither the network nor the producers of "American Idol" — a show long plagued by reports of voting irregularities — really care about the legitimacy of the competition.

Ligouri told critics, "We've clarified and reclarified our fraternization policies." Which, according to executive producer Nigel Lythgoe, "don't differ at all" from when Abdul was carrying on with Clark.

And those rules are?

"Basically nonfraternization" between judges and contestants.

Gee, it's easy to understand why Abdul is still on the show, isn't it?