‘Idol’ fans just didn’t believe in Brooke White

Brooke White couldn’t make enough “American Idol” voters believe in her, and thus she found herself evicted from the competition on Wednesday.

White, who was joined in the bottom two by perennial elimination runner-up Syesha Mercado, had a tough time with the Neil Diamond theme on Tuesday. Simon Cowell referred to her version of “I’m a Believer” as “a nightmare,” and while “I Am I Said” was better, it ultimately didn’t buy her another week on the show

True to form, the sobbing White thanked her supporters and said she was grateful for the opportunity. She then followed by blanking on the words to “I Am I Said,” a day after writing them on her hand as a memory aid.

White worked as a nanny for young children before making the “Idol” finals, and is one of the most overtly wholesome contestants the show has had in years. She told the judges in the auditions that she’d never even seen an R-rated movie, and there’s no indication that Hollywood has changed that.

She was also the most pleasant contestant in recent memory. In the early weeks of the season when she was among the favorites, she agreed with the judges’ criticism or tried to deflect bad reviews with plaintive excuses or interruptions.

As the season wore on, her eyes welled up when she got upset, and the tears always flowed when she was among the lower vote-getters. Since White’s struggled over the past month or so, that happened a lot recently.

Ultimately, she could well wind up working in children’s music. She even looks a little like Laurie Berkner, whose music is on the Noggin cable channel and in the CD players of millions of child-carrying SUVs everywhere.  But the problem she had all season was just that — the vibe she gave off was that of a children’s performer, or a Carole King-type of revue act, not that of a pop star.

She’s not a rock singer, she doesn’t really do country well, and she moves around onstage like she’s trying to remember which foot is supposed to go in front of the other. She didn’t fit the “Idol” mold, and wasn’t good enough to succeed by breaking it.

Castro survives — somehow
Though White’s ouster wasn’t much of a surprise, she at least gave the impression that she was trying as hard as she could each week. Jason Castro sang a lot worse than she did on Tuesday, and he can’t even say the same thing about his effort.

The dreadlocked guitar-player placed some of the blame for his struggles on the show’s themes and some on himself, saying that he got good reviews when he either did songs that he knew or he changed the arrangements to suit his voice. There’s not much he can do about the former, since the show’s producers seemed determined to pick a more irrelevant theme every week, but David Cook has somehow managed to do the latter well enough to emerge as one of the favorites.

Castro was the first to be told he was safe on Wednesday. David Archuleta followed, and when Cook was also given the good news, that ended the bottom two drama.

Since Mercado outsang White by a fair margin, the most drama the show had after that came when one of the callers in the viewer mail segment turned out to be Simon’s first kiss. For the first time in the show’s seven seasons, he looked totally flummoxed, although he did manage to remember the woman’s name.

Sadly for White, not enough voters remembered hers.

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