Jennifer Grey was named the new "Dancing With the Stars" champ, despite painful neck and back injuries and a voting bloc for Bristol Palin.
The 50-year-old actress, whose performances were almost always flawless during the season, beat out last-place finisher Palin Tuesday on the hit ABC show and actor Kyle Massey, who came in second.
Grey and professional partner Derek Hough earned a string of perfect scores on their way to the mirrorball trophy. The couple consistently topped the judges' leaderboard throughout the season, but Palin's cadre of voter support led to some surprising upsets, including Brandy's elimination after earning a perfect score last week.
Palin's improbable run to the finals had been championed by some conservative bloggers running get-out-the-vote [how sad is that ?]campaigns. Sarah Palin supporters helped organize campaigns to keep her daughter on the show, like radio talk host Tammy Bruce's "Operation Bristol." Conservative blogger Kevin DuJan's Hillbuzz.org website also led a get-out-the-vote effort. She came into the season finale in last place and said she was leaving her fate to the voters.
Jason Gershman, a mathematician from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who studied some of the telephone voting patterns, said he believed Bristol Palin's support was largely political, given that it appeared she got more votes during the weeks that Sarah was in the studio audience. He said he sensed a backlash brewing against Palin by fans who thought the best dancer should win, and they coalesced around Grey, who kept winning perfect scores from the judges despite fighting through injury.
"If her name was Bristol Smith or Bristol Jones, she would not be on the show or she would not have gotten this far," he said. "She went from being a bad dancer to a mediocre dancer. But she was not the best dancer."
Palin made it to the finals despite mediocre and at times poor performances. She said it was challenging to overcome the flurry of media coverage that erupted when she was voted in over Brandy for the final – who had received a perfect score for her tango – on the hit show, prompting some viewers to question the veracity of the "Dancing" voting system.
"Dancing" producers said Tuesday that "a record amount of activity" overloaded its online and telephone voting systems after Monday's episode.
"Some viewers reported experiencing difficulties registering their votes for the 'Dancing With the Stars' finale, which affected each finalist equally," show producers said in a statement. "The issue was promptly addressed" but voting times were not extended [ sound familiar ? ].
and in related news
"Sarah Palin's Alaska" set a TLC ratings record when it debuted to 5 million viewers last week, but the second episode showed a huge drop-off in viewership.
Episode two of the Palin reality show averaged just 3 million viewers, down 40% from the previous week.
Perhaps more troubling are the viewer demographics. The show averaged just 885,000 viewers in the advertiser-friendly 18-49 demo, and the median age of the show's viewer is a whopping 57 years old. According to The Live Feed's James Hibberd, that's 15 years older than TLC's median age of 42.
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