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If you stopped watched American Idol after the audition rounds, you'd be forgiven if you somehow mistook the reality colossus as the search for America's greatest schizophrenic. (Symptoms: "delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, grossly disorganized behavior, dressing inappropriately, crying frequently...") Once the parade of psychotics passes by our TV sets and back into the crazy jungle, however, the cream eventually does begin to rise to the top—whether through pure talent, or with the help of a story about one's father's botched murder-suicide attempt. Jennifer Hudson definitely fell into the former camp when she stumbled onto the Idol stage in Season 3, but perhaps her current dizziness from trying on Oscar gowns has given her temporary amnesia regarding just how long-range and accurate 19 Management's sniper-fire can be:

"On American Idol, you go through this mental thing; you've got to get yourself back together. You've been abused, misled and brainwashed to believe whatever they want you to think," Hudson, 25, tells the new issue of Essence.

"You become a character - I became the girl in the turkey wrapping." (On one episode, she wore an unflattering outfit that earned that label.) "I just knew I had to sing my way out of it. I don't believe in looking back, and I didn't look back."

Sure, being the "girl in the turkey wrapping" is less desirable than the current character for which she's been cast: "failed Idol contestant who's succeeded against all odds, in the Zac Posen wrapping." But while she seems ungrateful now, ultimately Hudson will learn to appreciate her unkind Idol experience, if only for better preparing her to roll with punches when her follow-up, Glitteresque-project flops and her agent stops returning her calls.