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Hey, remember all the controversy caused when Carly Hennessy--an Irish pop singer who'd been signed to MCA and whose one album had been such a colossal multimillion-dollar failure, she'd made #15 on Blender magazine's "20 Biggest Record Company Screw-Ups Of All Time" list--resurfaced as Carly Smithson on season 7 of American Idol?

Viewers (myself among them) were understandably outraged that this show, a show presumably focused on giving undiscovered talent a chance, was being used as a relaunching pad to revive the fizzled career of this has-been (or never-was). Sure, there was minor public outrage surrounding Idol finalists like former Maverick Records rocker Michael Johns and ex-Arista Nashville signing Kristy Lee Cook, too, but since those singers' albums never actually came out, Carly caught most of the flak. And rightfully so.

Click HERE for more details on the Carly Smithson American Idol scandal.

Anyway, I honestly can NOT believe the AmIdol producers are up to their old sneaky tricks in season 8. You'd think after all that Carly hullaballoo, they would steer clear of such blatant favoritism and the inclusion of what are known in the Idol blogosphere as "plants." But...no. Along with an actual (Archuleta-associated!) Osmond and Jason Castro's little brother, this season features a particularly poisonous plant: Joanna Pacitti.

Joanna, who auditioned on Wednesday night's Louisville episode, is basically Carly 2.0.

Like Carly, Joanna is a former child entertainer--a moderately talented, moderately pretty girl aggressively groomed from an early age to be a big pop star. And like Carly, who ended up getting dropped from MCA and becoming a waitress, things also didn't work out for Joanna quite as she or her Svengalis (among them Geffen Records honcho and frequent reality-TV figure Ron Fair) had planned. Despite appearances on the movie soundtracks for Legally Blonde, Nancy Drew, and Bratz, and having one of her songs covered by Britney Spears, Joanna's one album for Geffen/A&M, This Crazy Life, was a flop. Just like Carly's Ultimate High. Joanna (as she used to be singularly named) was dropped from A&M in 2007.

I can't say I'm at all surprised that Joanna's career did not take off. This Crazy Life, while capably sung, was a very generic album, hardly a vehicle for the next supposed superstar. I actually remember, surprisingly vividly, when some people from her label came by the Yahoo! Music office a few years ago to play Joanna's music video for the staff, in hopes of getting us all pumped up. They talked Joanna up excitedly for about 20 minutes, like she was Madonna, Janet, and Mariah all rolled into one, before they finally played us....this:

The silence in the Yahoo! conference room was deafening. I was not impressed, and judging by my co-workers' lack of feedback, I assumed they agreed with me. And I was equally unimpressed with Joanna's audition on American Idol this week.

It turns out that Joanna's short-lived tenure with A&M/Geffen wasn't her first career setback: Her firing from the touring company of Annie, when she was just 12 years old, was apparently such a psyche-destroying blow, it became the subject of an in-depth Barbara Walters report. Just check out this 1996 clip and try not to retch:

Seriously, now. "The sun will come out tomorrow"?  Puh-leeze. Cue the violins. Yes, I'm sure getting axed at such a tender age must've been a truly awful experience for little Joanna, but the way Babs goes on and on about this supposed great tragedy here, it's like all of Joanna's family died in a fiery plane crash or something. There are people auditioning for American Idol this season who are blind, who have ailing mothers to care for, who became unexpectedly widowed while still in their twenties. Joanna's story is not that heartbreaking. It's not such a hard-knock life for her, really.

But of course, that's how the Idol producers are trying to spin it. Just like they made Carly Hennessy-Smithson's visa troubles on season 7 seem like some horrific tale of injustice and woe, this week they ran constant-loop closeups of Joanna's tear-streaked face as she whimpered about her showbiz struggles and then finally triumphed at her obviously staged audition. Sheesh.

To the Idol producers' and Joanna's credit, however, at least this time they didn't try to deny the (easily-Wikipedia'd) facts. When Carly was on last year, she gushed that she'd "never been in a studio before!!" (this despite recording her million-dollar major-label album with seasoned producer Gregg Alexander of the New Radicals) and had "never sung in front of so many people!!" (this despite performing with Bryan Adams at Dublin Castle). And the show never mentioned Carly's MCA past until the public uproar grew too loud to totally ignore. At least Fox learned from that mistake, so with Joanna this week, the show came clean from the start. "You're Joanna Pacitti! I know you! You were on A&M," judge Kara DioGuardi blurted out the moment Joanna entered the audition room.

Well, fair enough. But that still doesn't make it OK, as far as I'm concerned. Because Joanna's had her shot already. She's had a record deal--unlike most, less fortunate Idol hopefuls--so why should she be allowed to compete for a new record contract? Joanna has already tried and failed at the major-label level. Few people bought her music in the past, so why should she be able to use the Idol platform to try to change that? And what makes the bigwigs at 19/BMG/Fox even think that American Idol will change that?

The bottom line is, it's just not fair for Joanna to take away a spot from some unknown, unconnected talent who's never had the opportunity to make a music video, get on a film soundtrack, be mentored by Ron Fair, etc. And you can bet she didn't have to stand in line for hours in Louisville with all the plebes to get her spot, either.

It's just not right.

Plus, amusingly, in an interview once, Pacitti was asked if it bothered her that TV shows like American Idol so rapidly churn out instant pop stars these days. She answered: "It's handed to people way too easily. I'd rather have my experience than overnight success."

Well, I guess Joanna got desperate and changed her mind. But she's going to have to really bring it during Hollywood Week for me to change my mind about her.