In April Jennifer talked to People magazine about her beauty regimen and used the occasion to effusively gush that she is the “happiest” when she’s “home with husband Marc Anthony and their 3-year-old twins, Max and Emme.”

On the American Idol finale, Marc Anthony, who played Hector LaVoe, and JLo, who played Puchi in the movie “El Cantante” treated the public to a steamy exhibition of marital affection. Marc, accompanied by Shelia E, performed the vocals and music from the lively “Aguanile.” As an added attraction, Mrs. Anthony emerged in a fringed Dancing with the Stars outfit and proceeded to do a bootylicious salsa.

Just 90 days after Jennifer’s “happiest at home” interview and two months after she whispered what appeared to be a naughty remark in her husband’s ear on the stage of the Kodak Theatre, the pair announced their seven-year marriage is over.

Between the two of them, the Anthonys have managed to rack up five official marriages, six children, and a long list of ex-lovers. Jennifer was once married to restaurateur Ojani Noa, who’s presently shopping around a steamy “home video” starring a conjugally-preoccupied Lopez and Noa. Jenny’s split-second-long second marriage was to Chris Judd, her Love Don’t Cost a Thing backup dancer.

After divorcing Judd, Jennifer quickly assumed one half of the famous Ben Affleck/Jennifer Lopez engaged hot couple duet – affectionately referred to in the tabloids as “Bennifer.” At the time of that romantic betrothal, Jennifer said that “her feelings for Affleck [were] ‘bigger and realer’ and ‘totally different’ from anything she [had] felt before.”

Marco Antonio Muñiz’s relationship history is a little less glamorous.  Marc has a daughter, Arianna, from a prior relationship with a New York City police officer. The Latino crooner started up with the “The World’s Most Beautiful Woman,” Jennifer Lopez, in the midst of his divorce from former Miss Universe and mother to his two sons, Dayanara Muciz (née Torres) Delgado.

Marc Anthony married Jennifer Lopez a few days after his divorce from Dayanara was final. Then, after just four years of marriage, Jennifer and Marc were rumored to be separating. It was then that Marc Anthony did with Jennifer what he did after being estranged from Torres – he renewed his marriage vows.  In fact, Mr. and Mrs. Anthony-Lopez renewed their vows once in 2008 and again in 2010 – a sure sign that something in JLo Land was in dire need of constant revitalization.

In 2010, in an interview featured in Latina magazine, Jenny admitted that “marriage isn’t easy,” but that “everything” about hers “is great.” The question is:  If the marriage was so “great,” what happened?  How could two soul mates with so much shared cultural heritage just throw away seven years of committed love, leaving in its wake two adorable tots whose impending birth was announced in Miami before 10,000 adoring fans?

One thing’s for sure, it’s no secret that in addition to tax evasion and an affinity for beautiful Latina women, Marc Anthony has a reputation as a bit of a control freak.  The man even went so far as to install himself as an uninvited fourth American Idol judge, coaching Jennifer on picks and advising Season 11 contestants.

The year started with God-only-knows-what going down on the buffet line at President Obama’s Super Bowl party and ended with randy 20-year-old American Idol contestant Casey Abrams planting a wet one on Jen’s perfectly lined bee-stung lips. With JLo’s newfound star power, it’s probable that on more than one occasion Marc Anthony  was under pressure  to suppress reacting to strange men fawning over his wife, whose sultry exhibitionism is the basis of her successful career.

One instigating factor in an already tense situation might have been the awkward decision to feature JLo’s former lover Sean “P. Diddy” Combs as a performer on American Idol. Diddy still openly professes affection for the woman he once attempted to woo back with 100 white doves and 100 pink balloons, and having him on the show probably went over like a lead balloon with Marc Anthony.

Then, one week prior to announcing an end to the marriage, JLo arrived accompanied only by mamá Guadalupe Lopez at the BAFTA/Duke and Duchess of Cambridge event, wearing a skintight asymmetrical green Emilio Pucci number which gifted the handsome Duke with an up-close and personal view of the soon-to-be ex-Mrs. Marc Anthony’s famously rock-hard abdominals.

Between the excess baggage, former lovers, lack of adequate clothing, and the huge egos, like most Hollywood couplings the marriage was doomed from the start.  The only real surprise is that this one managed to last seven years.

Whatever the reason for the split, the Marc Anthony-Jennifer Lopez divorce proves once again that in Hollywood, marriage has no meaning, and neither money nor fame possesses the power to keep families together.  The only question that remains for the future is whose name will replace Ojani, Chris, Ben, Sean and Marc the next time Jennifer Lopez professes undying love for someone in the tabloids, where the storyline will remain the same and the only thing changed will be the leading man.

Interestingly, on American Idol each week those eliminated, with the exception of a Rod Stewart wannabe from Alabama, returned home to blue states.  Even the stunningly talented Pia Toscano, who was thought to be a shoe-in, was sent packing back to the blue shores of Howard Beach, NY.

Besides being entertained by judges J Lo, Steven Tyler and Randy Jackson, this season American Idol has showcased talent from all along the musical spectrum. America was wowed by James Durbin, whose voice embellished raucous heavy metal; Pia was crowned the queen of ballads; Casey Abrams entertained America with a scruffy eccentric brand of stand-up bass showmanship; Haley Reinhard emerged as a polished version of Janis Joplin; and a cuddly promise of Luther was reborn in the endearing Jacob Lusk.

Yet, throughout the competition and despite the huge talent pool, country singers Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery endured from week to week. One thing about Lauren and Scotty that stood out was their consistent profession of personal faith and loyalty to a patriotic genre of music that unabashedly celebrates both God and country.

Scotty McCreery is the all-American freckle-faced kid with his head cocked sideward, sporting the huge crucifix and a constant grin, renowned for singing sideways into the mike. Lauren is the sweet 16 country singer from Georgia who admitted she prays before going out on stage and whose face belies her adolescent shock each time she’s put through to the next round.

All of the eliminated American Idol contestants experimented with different songs, styles and musical identities. Scotty and Lauren didn’t; both remained true to prayer, God, and the red, white and blue with songs like “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)?” Young Lauren even reminded a nation fraught with hardship that ‘God is great’ “Anyway.”

Throughout the season, Scotty’s wrist was adorned with an “I am Second” bracelet, which represents a movement that encourages people to live for God, not for government, the right to choose, saving the planet, or Barack Obama. The ‘Yes We Can’ that McCreery promoted was about putting God first and Scotty second, and the American Idol audience loved it.

Curiously, Obama, who usually makes a seasonal appearance on Idol to remind Americans who is worthy of being idolized, didn’t show up for the “show’s youngest-ever, and first all-country music finale.” President Obama hosts music nights and even welcomed rapper Common to the White House, but to date has yet to invite “Independence Day” Martina McBride and will likely never have the outspoken conservative fiddler Charlie Daniels over for a Super Bowl Party.  Why?  Because country music is alien to everything Barack Obama represents.

Secular rock-and-roll/will.i.am America put Obama in the White House in 2008. America cheered as Obama exhorted the nation, saying “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” Lest we need reminding, thus far neither has happened.

With the election one year from now, Obama should take note – country music, with its huge red state audience, prevailed on American Idol with its “Jesus Take the Wheel…Courtesy of Red, White and Blue” lyrics.  The season is over, the votes have been tallied, and after praying backstage, Mom, apple pie, George Strait “Heartland” songs, and two fresh-faced red state/church kids are all the winners.

This season the American Idol vote may be saying more than who is the best singer on a primetime TV show. It may be that America is fed up with President ‘Hope and Change’ Obama being more concerned with Muslim outreach than upholding the Judeo-Christian foundational values of America. Maybe our country is sick of its President apologizing for a nation that patriotic Americans know and love and believe is at its core intrinsically good.

If America’s response to Lauren Alaina and Scotty McCreery’s emphasis on God and country is any indication of what will be inspiring voters in the next election, in the words of Scotty McCreery’s favorite Montgomery Gentry song, in 2012 former American Idol Barack Obama may be the one who finds himself “Gone.”

On Wednesday night American Idol aired its season finale.  The true star of the evening wasn’t the endless parade of aging music groups trotted out to croak medleys of their ancient hits.  Nor was it either of the two finalists anxiously hoping to be crowned the newest American Idol.

No, it was Simon Cowell, the most popular judge on the panel, who is leaving the show.  So integral is he to its success that fans and producers alike worry the show won’t be the same without him.

When American Idol first premiered, nobody would have predicted that Simon Cowell would become its favorite judge.  Instead, they might have pointed to the cloyingly supportive (and creatively medicated) Paula Abdul, who never had a negative word to say to any contestant.

The reason is very simple:  Simon Cowell is the most conservative personality on primetime network TV.  And America is a center-right country, fertile ground for Simon’s point of view.

The show itself is a merciless meritocracy.  Failing singers are inexorably weeded out, one by one.  It’s pure survival of the fittest, nary a government  handout or stimulus in sight.  In the end, there can be only one.  (Cue Queen’s “Who Wants to Live Forever.”)

But the judge whom contestants most want to please isn’t the kindest one on the panel, but rather, the most insulting, the king of mean himself:  Simon Cowell.  And no, this desire to please Simon isn’t some weird new form of battered wife syndrome.  It’s a wholesome thirst for a magical elixir sadly lacking in America of late, harder to find than Coke with real sugar — a bracing tonic called the unvarnished truth.

Most of American Idol’s contestants are fairly young, products of a contemporary school system that hands out A’s like Chiclets, that’s focused on falsely pumping up a student’s “self-esteem” like one of those tacky foil mylar balloons (and just as empty), releasing kids into the real world believing they are just as good as anybody else.  When, in fact, they aren’t.

It is a mathematical fact that half of all kids are below average.  And 90% of all children are less talented than the top 10%.  Shocking, but true.  Young people would know this, if the schools bothered to teach them math instead of how America was stolen from the Indians, Mexicans, and Palestinians.

Awards are handed out today for merely showing up.  In order to avoid hurting any child’s feelings, some youth soccer leagues have stopped keeping score.   Schools are banning dodgeball and even tag, because it may create ” self-esteem issues among weaker and slower children.”  Kids are coddled like delicate Faberge eggs with egos more fragile than Roman Polanski’s moral compass.

This background might help explain why so many talentless people try out for American Idol — and then appear shocked when they are told they suck. Surely some of them are just kidding.

But a surprising number of the really awful ones seem deadly serious.  And quite often, they have a posse of family members and friends backing them up, assuring them after they’ve been rejected, “That’s okay, sweetie, you’re the best, they don’t know what they’re talking about.”

The viewers at home can see that these “friends” are doing them no favors.  In fact, a true friend would tell them, well, the truth.

The contestants may not always realize it, but Simon Cowell is their truest friend.  They’d be better off if they’d heard from their friends or family rather than Simon that they sound “like a cat jumping off the Empire State Building” (to quote one of Simon’s classic put-downs), before they made public asses of themselves on TV’s highest-rated show.

But America’s epidemic of unearned self-esteem is our entertainment gain.  Over the years Simon has gotten off some pretty good lines at their expense (all part of a rigorous education).

For instance, ” You have just invented a new form of torture.”  Or how about “It’s a beautiful song, when you’re not singing it.”  And my favorite:  “If you had lived 2,000 years ago and sung like that, I think they would have stoned you.”

No effort to soften the blow.  No desire to spare anyone’s feelings.  Just a fierce fidelity to blunt honesty.

And yet Simon genuinely believed he was doing the contestants a greater service than those who pulled their punches, who humored their delusions of grandeur which, we all know, will result in nothing but more heartache down the road, waste more of their lives chasing an impossible dream.

A dose of cold realism is more compassionate than a shot of false hope.  Few things separate conservatives from liberals more than where you stand on that.

And so a funny thing happened as Simon lambasted one tone-deaf buffoon after another.  The contestants shrugged off knee-jerk praise emanating from more diplomatic judges like Randy Jackson, Ellen DeGeneres, and (especially) Paula Abdul.  (Although Randy has gotten tougher this season, perhaps in anticipation of Simon’s departure.)

When it was Simon’s turn, they listened intently.  A positive word from him was greeted with tears of joy.  A lesson in economics:  parsimonious with his praise, Simon raised its value higher than the more promiscuous compliments generously dealt by the other judges.

A bravo from Simon was like a unexpected monsoon shower in the Gobi desert.  That’s because everyone knows Simon doesn’t BS.  Simon is like New York City in the song:  If you could make it with him, you could make it anywhere.

If you need further evidence of Simon’s conservatism, look no further than the recent United Kingdom general election.  Simon Cowell, one of Britain’s most influential music moguls, came out in support of David Cameron from the (gasp) Conservative Party.

For years Brits have relied on the false assurances of Tony Blair and his successor Gordon Brown that the government could keep spending beyond its means and a day of reckoning will never come.

Simon sounded more like a tea partier than an entertainer when he told the Sun (a right-leaning tabloid), “Tackling the national debt mountain as soon as possible is vital.  Delaying the pain for future generations is suicidal.  We’ve got to start getting the deficit down right now, not next year.”

And here he sounds downright Reaganesque:  ”[The government] should give hope to the younger generation to build on our wonderful heritage.  It should inspire us to get out there and create and invent.

“And then it should get right out of the way.” [Italics in the original.]

The UK public agreed with Simon, voting Cameron in as the new British Idol Prime Minister.  The truth may not be what we hope for, but it’s the best medicine for what ails you.

Coincidentally, I was living in Encino, California in 1993. The Jackson family lived not far from me. I would see Joe Jackson at the supermarket or Randy at the car wash. But I never expected to meet Michael. About once a week I would go over the hill to Golden Apple Comics on Melrose. It was owned by a friend, the late Bill Liebowitz, and I also had a bunch of friends who worked there. They told me Michael was a big customer. He would go there with a group of kids and buy them whatever they wanted. He would often spend thousands on those days.

I asked one of my friends if Michael bought any comics for himself. He said sure. So I said what kind of books does he read? He said “Anything with kids in them.” I remember thinking: “Brrr!” at the time.

Sure, that could be innocent and all, but there were all those stories even then of Michael having kids with him all the time. Which is kind of odd for a grown man, but Michael Jackson was never known for being normal.

Everyone I know who knew him said he was a very nice guy, kind of quiet and he did a lot with charity. No one had a bad thing to say about him. But I did detect a certain reluctant vibe when discussing Michael with my friends at the store. They didn’t say why, but they felt he was weird. And this is from people who worked at a store on Melrose in L.A.

So one day I came in the store and one of my friends told me Jackson was in the store. And there he was, over by the comics rack. He had his arm around someone like he was on a date. That someone was Jordy Chandler.

I walked over to the long racks and pretended not to notice them. Jackson had his people with him including his driver. That driver was later a witness against Jackson in his trial.

Jackson was whispering in Jordy’s ear and they were acting totally like people on a date. It was not the kind of behavior a couple of straight guys do together. Then they went back in the store in the employee area and disappeared. They were gone for a half hour. I stuck around and talked to my friends, just shooting the breeze. I assumed Jackson left by the back door to avoid people. But Bill the owner asked me if I wanted to meet Michael Jackson, and I said, sure.

Jackson reappeared, and left the store. I went out there with Bill and he introduced me. Jordy had detached from Michael and went to the black SUV. I didn’t shake hands with Jackson, I only got to exchange pleasantries. But I noticed something, when I tried to look him in the eyes, he had this very evasive…almost crazed look. Like someone who had just committed a crime and didn’t want anyone to see them. It was weird.

I’ve met a lot of famous celebs and have never seen them as anything other than people. People who work in the entertainment industry, which I was doing at the time myself. So I’ve been very laid back in these encounters. So I know it was nothing I did that made him look at me like that. I thought, “Man, is he paranoid or what? Maybe he’s on something.”

After they took off, I went back in the store to buy some comics and I asked one of my friends what they were doing in the back room for so long. He said Michael and Jordy were in the bathroom for a half hour.

Yeah.

I said, huh? He said that’s not unusual for him.

Now, I don’t know what they did in there, but it was a small one-person bathroom. And I can only think of a couple reasons two people would go into a small bathroom together. One of the nice reasons is they were helping the other with their costumes. He wasn’t wearing anything that out of the ordinary. So that leaves the other two reasons, since we can assume Jordy is potty trained at 13. Sex or drugs.

When the story about the molestation broke a few months later, that pretty much made up my mind which reason it was.

A lot of people say Michael Jackson did not molest kids. Maybe not. But I have a hard time believing it.

Everyone I know, who worked with Michael had great things to say about him, so I suppose he wasn’t a bad person. But if you have followed his story closely, he was no saint either. He actively worked to insure his brothers would never succeed. He reneged on deals constantly and didn’t pay people he owed their money.

There will be a lot of stories coming out about him and his defenders will work hard to try to canonize him. But the truth is a lot more complex.

My major problem with these talent shows is they try to give the impression that all of the contestants are just diamonds in the rough that took an hour off from the Burger King to come down and give it a shot. The people at “American Idol” want you to believe they have discovered some guy with a day gig and a dream and they helped polish up their act and transformed them into stars. Adam Lambert and Kris Allen did not go stand in line with the rest of the mob. They were somehow pre-screened and told when and where to report. Is there anyone in American who thinks that Adam Lambert wasn’t a professional singer before he was on “American Idol?”

The same is true of NBC’s “Last Comic Standing.” The people who are going to make the top twenty or ten or whatever it is are all long time professional comics. Many already have deals in place with NBC, or an agent and a manager before they “audition” to be on the show.

Here’s my point, after a certain point the show gets boring for me because all of the people have chops and a reasonable shot at winning. After a point in the elimination rounds all of the people on the show are already show business professionals who are acting out a charade for your entertainment.

I have noticed an embarrassing trend on the show this year. A few times this season if the “star” guest singer had been in the competition they would have been voted off of the show! Several of the guests were, as Randy Jackson might put it, a little pitchy.

Enjoy the final results tonight “American Idol” fans, and rest easy because no matter who comes out on top they are both going to have great careers. Besides the real winner has already been determined, the producers of “American Idol” and Fox who are raking in billions.

Hey Congress, how about a windfall profits tax?