Player Haters

March 29, 2007 — -- There is a woman in Buffalo, N.Y., apparently starving herself right now in an effort to get Sanjaya Malakar kicked off "American Idol."

Yep, that's right, a hunger strike -- just like Ghandi.

Only it's not the fate of a billion Indians she's worried about, it's the fate of just one. And to be fair, he's actually Indian-American.

Identifying herself only as J on her MySpace page and in a video she posted to YouTube, the 23-year-old woman says she's sworn off food until Malakar, 17, is voted off the hit talent show.

"I'm going on a hunger strike," she says in a video posted March 16. "I'm doing this because I believe other talented contestants who deserve a chance to win are being eliminated."

With his boyish smile, eclectic hairdos and mediocre singing, Malakar is this year's "Idol" cause celebre. He is loved by some -- take 13-year-old Ashley Ferl, known as the "superfan," who was seen sobbing during one of his performances -- and hated by others.

J has spawned at least one other hunger-striking imitator and the show's toughest judge, Simon Cowell, has vowed to quit if Malakar wins.

Love him or hate him, Malakar has shown staying power. He narrowly beat elimination in the first weeks, but has since developed an ever stronger fan base. Some attribute his success to an Indian-American voting bloc, and others to a Web site devoted to destroying the show's credibility by encouraging people to vote for the program's least worthy contestant.

A young man, who has also pledged to starve until Malakar is voted off, posted a video on YouTube under the handle Idolmatt21.

"I'm not going to eat at all until he's voted off," he says in the video. "All I can say is," he says as he rips a photo of the singer in half, "Sanjaya, you're going down."

If you think these people are just bored with their lives, you're right, says one expert.

"Idle minds" -- that's idle, not idol -- "are the playground for the devil," said Stuart Fischoff, senior editor of the Journal of Media Psychology and a specialist in fan obsessions.