A missed opportunity to honor victims

RYAN SEACREST brought it up at the beginning. Chris Richardson alluded to it. Even Simon Cowell mentioned it (after what he would later say was a poorly timed eye roll). But in all the fleeting but heartfelt references Tuesday night on “American Idol” to the shooting tragedy at Virginia Tech, nobody had the wherewithal to use the most powerful tool of heart-to-heart communication at their disposal, the one that the whole enterprise ostensibly is about: music.

What an utterly wasted opportunity to offer comfort, or to channel emotion, that any of the seven remaining contestants could have tapped -- and on Country Night no less. Can you imagine the effect of LaKisha Jones singing Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”? “Someday when we meet up yonder/We’ll stroll hand in hand again/And in a land that knows no parting/Blue eyes crying in the rain.”

Or Jordin Sparks singing “I Will Always Love You” (like Dolly Parton’s original, please; not the overwrought mess Whitney Houston made of it)? Or Melinda Doolittle putting those dusky tones of hers to Ralph Stanley’s haunting “O Death”?

And what did we get? Richardson’s nasally invocation of Rascal Flatts’ insipid “Mayberry.” And Sanjaya Malakar’s mushy prance through Bonnie Raitt’s “Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About.”

Of course, everyone had chosen and rehearsed their songs and taped Martina McBride’s vocal coaching segments before Monday. So yes, they would have had to depart from the script. But sometimes life departs from the script.

randy.lewis@latimes.com