American Idol...A singing competition?

I am truly addicted to American Idol, I never miss it. The past couple of weeks it has been the audition process and I can't believe some of the people that try out! After all of the seasons I still can't tell if they think they are really good or they are just doing it for a joke, for example here is one of my favorite "worst auditions" this season. Something that does bother me about the process is people who are not good but still make it because of some gimmick they have used to get noticed, a specific audition this season was the "Bikini Girl." I don't think that it is fair to the good or even the not so good people who audition, it makes it less of a singing competition and more of an issue of who gets the judges attention no matter what their voice sounds like. I know that this needs to be done for the ratings, obviously I seemed to be entertained by it and so are a lot of people, I just question how much of a fair singing competition it starts out as in the begining.