Are you buying Kellie Pickler's shtick-ler?

Simon Cowell may like her better than Season 4 champ Carrie Underwood, but not everybody’s a fan of current American Idol wannabe Kellie Pickler. In today’s Palm Beach Post, for example, writer Leslie Gray Streeter compares the blonde, North Carolina naif to Edward Norton’s murder suspect in Primal Fear. ”She’s laying on that ‘I ain’t never been nowhere and don’t know nothing but I’m as shiny as a shrimp in grits to be here and swim in your see-ment pond!’ thing a little thick. And I ain’t buying it,” Streeter writes (thanks to TV Tattle for the link).

I’m not entirely sure I’d disagree with Streeter. I mean, it can’t have escaped Pickles that Jessica Simpson was once a bargain-bin Britney — that is, until she got her own reality show and marveled that Chicken of the Sea was a brand of tuna. Indeed, the way Kellie has marveled at big-city food like calamari and ”sal-mon” has come off as more than a tad forced. But in her defense, I think Pickles was genuinely confused when Simon called her a ”naughty little minx” last night; that bewildered ”I’m a mink!” retort was priceless, and darn good TV. So while I don’t necessarily trust Kellie, she’s definitely making Idol‘s fifth season more interesting to watch. Just as long as she doesn’t outlast the lovely and talented Mandisa!, that is…

What do you think of Kellie Pickler? Is she just a good ol’ Southern girl — or the devil in disguise?