There are lots of weird things about American Idol banning David Archuleta’s father, Jeff, from rehearsal sessions–the timing (the news was released late Friday, after the three remaining Idol hopefuls had mostly completed their homecoming tours), the source of the leak (did a Fox source tell TMZ about the ban?), and the fact that the producers were citing David’s “unfair advantage” of having his own musical arranger now, instead of at the beginning of the semifinals among them. But what’s most frustrating about the ban is the way that it’s turned the contestant at the center of it into a bulletproof entity, and how the conclusion of American Idol is even more foregone than it was when the Archuleta clan was just beginning its whirlwind tour of Utah’s mall parking lots and basketball stadia. The reasons why we’re going to definitely see David have his now a week from tomorrow after the jump.

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TMZ first reported it yesterday and now the Associated Press has confirmed it: The American Idol braintrust has banned David Archuleta’s father/musical arranger/puppet-string-puller, Jeff, from the show’s rehearsals, after months of speculation about his stage-dad tendencies and overbearing presence. The final straw? The cheesy “Beautiful Girls” interpolation into David’s performance of “Stand By Me” last Tuesday, which not only made the song’s message completely incoherent, it cost the producers an undisclosed amount of licensing money. This raises a host of questions regarding the junior Archuleta’s last two weeks in the competition (Will the news, and the apparent fact that Jeff is the first person to be banned from the Idol backstage ever, garner a lot of sympathy votes? Will this be his chance to show the haters that he can, in fact, interpret and arrange music without Daddy pulling the strings, or will he wilt under the pressure on Tuesday night? Is this abortion of a season over yet?) But leave it to the Archie-crazed commenters at rickey.org to ask the important questions regardnig this whole story.

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