I've never watched "American Idol" or, for that matter, any of the other "reality shows" that apparently absorb a tremendous national audience from night to night. Still in Morocco, however, I was at a dinner party at which, suddenly, a television set was turned on. Around the table were my old friend Bernard-Henry Lévi (Barbarism With a Human Face and literally a shelf-full of books challenging the intellectual and moral conventions of our time), the film director Claude Lanzmann (Pourquoi Israel and the settled masterpiece on the Holocaust, Shoah), and various other luminaries of the mind and spirit. So what were we doing sitting around the tube, a tell-tale nomenclature of my years? We were waiting to see "Star Academy," along with 10 million French. And God only knows how many other Europeanms and North Africans. This is the most popular show in France by far. Every Friday night, this ritualized but also exhilarating circus of talent, anxiety, human connection, success, and failure comes into people's homes for that rare occasion, as one guest put it, for the only time in the week when French families eat together. Maybe, without this program, they would never be à table en famille. Moreover, "American Idol" is not a stand-alone: Every night at six, an only-slightly-smaller audience watches the frantic preparations of these young people--some really gifted, some not--for the weekly appearance before the sombre, often haughty judges and the near-hysterical in-studio audience. So there are the judges and the home audience that votes by phone. Never since General De Gaulle addressed the French Nation in 1940 have so many citizens come together ... to act. There are many ironies to "Star Academy." I suppose the most telling is that the exalted word from the more exalted L'academie française is here being used for mass entertainment purposes. But it is also an ironic combination of experts, another version of what the French (altogether with irony) call "le commission des sages," and the mass near-hysterical democratic habits that have governed the country since 1789. Our reason for watching? Bernard's wife, among both the most esteemed and most popular stars of screen and song in France, was a guest on Friday's spectacular. (I wrote about her last when she sang in New York a couple of months ago.) I put her then in the range among Piaf, Garland, and Callas--and I still do. She has a new CD out: Judge for yourself: She combines the strengths of an intimate singer and of a relentless powerhouse. Her "C'est si bon" the other night evoked romantic yesterdays and confident tomorrows. I might even watch "American Idol" when I get home.