UPDATE: Don't forget to take my "Mo Wants To Know" poll on the reason behind deaf actress Marlee Matlin's appearance at last night's Idol. Click here!

Tonight Jordin will be crowned the 6th American Idol, for four reasons:

1. She is, as has been said over and over, the "whole package" - beautiful, with a terrific voice, plus she's got great teeth and lips. When she opens her mouth wide for the big notes, she's thrilling. (She stubbornly anchors herself to the standing mic, but so what? Her future is in recordings, not live concerts.)

2. She's multiracial. America's Melting Pot is a more complex ever, with far more than two "ingredients." Jordin's the Tiger Woods of Idol.

3. She got handed a gift with "This Is My Now," the original song written by the winning team from Seattle. It's a dopey song, but perfectly suited for Jordin's big notes. A disaster for Blake.

And perhaps most importantly...

4. She cried at the end of her song. She played the victor before any votes were even cast. (The equivalent of being crowned Miss America before the swimsuit competition.) This was a brilliant stroke on Jordin's part. She conditioned us all to see her as the inevitable winner before we even began dialing or texting.

It's a strategy that Melinda tried back in mid-March, weeping along with Paula at the end of her performance, prompting Simon to ask "why are you crying?" At the time I criticized Melinda strongly. I felt that the audience needed to be warned against a strategy clearly intended to circumvent the rest of the competition. Readers were furious with me, but I stand by what I wrote then. Melinda's chief miscalculation was that she played the winner, deployed these tactics, too early. Once the crying and the "Who, me?" surprise looks were called out by Simon, Melinda had to drop both - and the audience then decided she was boring.

Jordin's perfectly calibrated strategy will pay off. She played the winner - and shed the tears - just at the right moment.

As for Blake, the constant plaudits from the judges for his "creativity" never moved me. Isn't that what teachers and guidance counselors often say about special ed kids or troublemakers? "Ryan faces many challenges, but he's got such 'creativity.'"

Before tonight I'd grown weary of the American Idol death ritual: the Video Obit of the "journey" beginning with the contestant looking pallid and pimply (i.e., pre-makeover), singing a capella at the first audition... Simon looking pensive, maybe saying something cryptic before announcing "Welcome to Hollywood" ... then a tedious sequence of celebrity mentor hugs. (J. Lo really put on her best big sister act with all the embracing. Tony Bennett, not surprisingly, came off the most genuinely, with a dignified handshake for the men, hug for the women.)

All set to the overwrought "I'm Going Home." (The cruelest joke that could be played on me posthumously would be playing that song at my funeral. I'm amending my will to stipulate that there will be no Chris Daughtry music at my memorial.)

The group hug at the end of the song that the terminated contestant is forced to reprise is equally cloying, along with the declarations of lifelong friendship among the survivors. Give me a break. After this summer's tour, they'll all be at each other's throats. Chris and Blake will be battling over the same tween groupies. Chris Sligh will reconnect with his Bob Jones fundamentalist past and start relentlessly proselytizing, determined to "save" Sanjaya. A desperate Haley Scarnato will try to sleep with Clive Davis. And the constant crying of LaKisha's baby Brionne on the tour bus will only ratchet up the stress. (Will AI provide an au pair for Brionne? LaKisha should start lobbying now.)

Tonight's AI was teeming with surprises:

It started with the appearance in the audience of AI erotica star Antonella Barba. For those of you with short memories, Barba was voted off the show weeks after racy photos of her surfaced on the internet. Interesting factoid: some of the pix were taken at the fountain of DC's National World War II memorial, with Barba in a wet t-shirt. I've always wanted to ask Barba why she chose that monument. Was this her tribute to the Greatest Generation? Or was it a protest against what is undoubtedly the National Mall's ugliest monument?

Gina Glocksen, the season's "resident rocker" (an annoying label) was in the audience, though that was predictable.

LaKisha's performance of "This Ain't A Love Song" was a pleasant surprise, though I'm not sure it warranted a kiss from Simon. (If this were May it would have been Paula who kissed LaKisha. Lesbian kisses are a TV Sweeps Season staple.) I'm always glad when LaKisha has family in the audience. She needs all the support she can get. This time it was "LaKisha's Cousins."

I'm going on Fox TV's "Mike and Juliet Show" this morning to discuss Idol. Here's what I'm thinking right now:

The contestants are getting desperate.

Chris Richardson's post-performance tantrum about how he really meant to sing "nasal" was embarrassing - and his invoking the tragedy at Virginia Tech was inappropriate. Yes, the camera caught Simon rolling his eyes at Chris. Although Simon clearly was not rolling his eyes at the tragedy, this could prove to be a costly camera move. The producers obviously swept in for damage control and asked Simon to express his own sorrow later in the show. It was an awkward moment.

LaKisha's latest mention about how difficult life is raising Brionne as a single mom is pushing it. I have always been a LaKisha fan and when Martina McBride lavished praise on her, I was excited. Unfortunately, when Jesus took the wheel this time, the car careened out of control. (Worse than Eddie Griffin in that Ferrari.)

As for Sanjaya, the Willie Nelson/Isaac Mizrahi doo-rag was a disappointment. It was a stunt and a shameless pander to the VFTW/Howard Stern crowd. Last week Sanjaya made a valiant and successful attempt to sing well. He was headed toward a coup, bucking the cynics who scoffed at him. Now we're not sure who Sanjaya is: Is he the guy who really wants to be an American Idol and prove himself? Or is he the jaded jokester, willing to debase himself to stay in this competition? Is he Mario Lopez ... or is he Dustin Diamond?

I feel vindicated now that Simon has called Melinda on her "Who, me?" shy act.

I'm a huge fan of Martina McBride's and look forward to her performance tonight. I expect we'll all have shpilkes in our geneckteckessoink. (Until last night Kinky Friedman was the only country singer to use the word "verklempt.")

UPDATE: I just returned from the Fox "Mike and Juliet" Idol panel. It included Season Three's Jasmine Trias (very charming) and Food Network's Paula Deen (very "country"). Outside the studio Paula wore a floor-length fur coat. Raccoon? (Presumably she spit roasted whatever animal she killed for that thing.) Jasmine was surprisingly outspoken on the subject of ethnocentric American Idol voting. She asserts that she went as far as she did by galvanizing the Polynesian vote. I pointed out that she was the only thing residents of Guam and American Samoans (two groups which historically have hated each other) could both agree to like.