My friends and I didn’t come back from Spring Break with a tan, sand in our shoes or any sunburn. We took our road trip through the rough roads of Louisiana and Mississippi to the hilly Interstate 20 in Birmingham, Ala. So, instead, the thing we took back from our trip was a new fascination with American Idol’s Ruben Studdard.
I am not really a fan of reality TV. I am tired of snippy Survivors and masked dating. I laughed when both couples split up at the end of Fox’s “Married by America” because to me, it ironically lives up to its genre. In reality, most people don’t marry a person they’ve met six weeks earlier. But Birmingham’s obsession with American Idol and Ruben fascinates me.
Ruben is a large 25-year-old black man who grew up in Birmingham. According to his American Idol Web site, he began singing at the age of three, played football throughout high school and for one year at Alabama A&M University in Huntsville, Ala. In Birmingham, he sings a mixture of gospel, jazz, soul and R&B in his band Just a Few Cats. But after his first appearance on the second season of American Idol, he has become so popular in Birmingham that my friends and I were forced to stop what we were doing both Tuesday and Wednesday night to watch the manwho residents call their “velvet teddy bear.”
Billboards across the city display “GO RUBEN” in his trademark red, white and blue colors. Residents, sometimes groups of hundreds or more people, rally wearing 205 (Birmingham’s area code) T-shirts each night the show airs to watch and to call in and vote for their hometown star. In fact, Wednesday’s Birmingham Post-Herald reported 450,000 of the city’s 699,500 households consistently tune in to the show twice a week. The statistic is even more amusing, in that it comes from a front-page news article titled “Nursing home cheers on Alabama’s Idol, Residents rally from wheelchairs for Ruben Studdard.”
“[The craze] has brought the family back to viewing television together. It has bridged generation lines; it has bridged cultural lines,” Dennis Leonard, vice president and general manager of WBRC-6 told the Post-Herald. “People sit down and watch it with grandparents, with children, with neighbors and strangers. I’ve never seen this dynamic.”
Normally, I would find this kind of following for someone who is just a reality TV star insane. LSU students never showed much more than the occasional interest in their own Theo VonKurnatowski from Road Rules 2000. But after talking to some of the Birmingham residents who participate in this strange following, I’m convinced Ruben is a true hometown hero — one I wouldn’t mind seeing emerge from Baton Rouge or Louisiana.
Ruben is a mentor for the city’s high school students, residents told me. He never fails to give thanks to the city that brought him up and always wears his 205 jersey. To them, he is a symbol of their community — who they are and how they fit into this nation. They rally behind him because he has shown his loyalty to his neighbors and true passions for his talents. I would consider both of these traits those of a hero, be he a television superstar or a New York City firefighter.
Here in Baton Rouge, I haven’t seen anyone who even tries to compare himself to Ruben. Nick Saban and his football player may have a passion for their talents, but when was the last time any of them reached out to the entire community? Britney Spears probably thinks of nothing more than fun at Reggie’s or Fred’s when she comes home.
Who knows, maybe someone unexpected from Baton Rouge or Louisiana will pop up as the next national idol soon. But until he or she acts a little like Ruben, I doubt our city will see this same phenomenon that is taking place in Birmingham.