For ABC, a Win-Win With ‘Dancing With the Stars’ – NYTimes.com

Just like her Moma….one hard, tacky little wench…

ABC got everything it wanted out of its “Dancing With the Stars” finale Tuesday night: a huge audience, up about 25 percent from last year, and a winner that most of the show’s legion of fans will most likely feel is worthy.

Much of the success of this “Dancing” season was thanks to Bristol Palin — the daughter of the former governor of Alaska and vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin — whose run to the finals was widely chronicled and debated because of her generally lower scores from the show’s judges.

Ms. Palin, who was identified on the show as a “teen activist,” was eliminated Tuesday night, but not before she got a chance to perform two final dances and be a presence for most of the show’s two-hour duration.

With the show’s hosts acknowledging this was the “most talked about” season in the show’s history, there was little doubt that interest in Bristol Palin — both positive and negative — had helped the ratings. She stoked the heat surrounding the show this season by saying on several occasions that she was defying what she called “the haters” who were denigrating her performances because of what she said was dislike of her mother.

On the finale she made that point again, saying that winning would mean a lot and would be like “a big middle finger to all the people out there that hate my mom and hate me.”

via For ABC, a Win-Win With ‘Dancing With the Stars’ – NYTimes.com.