What happened to the stripper last year (or was it the year before)? Did they throw him off or did he get voted off, the week his strip club photos were discovered?
He got voted off.
"Frenchie" Davis was an AI contestant who was disqualified for appearing in topless photos when she was 19. Davis said she was up-front about her pictures:
"When I first discovered that I had made it to Hollywood and found out I would be competing to get into the top 30 and then later in the top 12, they had given us all this paperwork to fill out, background checks and that whole thing. So when we were doing that I had a discussion with some members of the production staff and I exposed to them a piece of my past; that when I was 19 years old, I took some pictures and that’s not the person I am. I wanted to be up-front about it. We talked about it and then nothing happened”.
The AI staff initially took no action, but later decided that Davis's participation would be inappropriate.
Davis said, "They had decided that because American Idol was a family show, that they could not have me on the show because of the pictures I had taken."
But by 2007, the AI powers-that-be changed their tune about it being a family show. Revealing pictures of Antonella Barba surfaced on the internet, but she was not let go by the AI PTB. She was voted off. That drew controversy and charges of racism, because Davis is black and Barba is white. In an interview with The New York Post, March 5th, 2007, Davis said:
"I couldn't help but notice the difference between the manner in which she was dealt with and how I was dealt with...I think it's fantastic if 'Idol' has evolved, and I think it's fantastic she won't have to go through what I went through four years ago … but if the rules have changed, I believe there should be something to make up for the fact that I was humiliated needlessly."
Last year, David Hernandez made it into the top 12 before it was revealed that he worked for three years as a dancer in a gay strip club, where he did lap dances and full nudity stripping. The very next week, the judges gave harsh reviews for his performance, and he was the first of the top 12 voted off.