We'll admit to watching very little of this season of America's Got Talent, NBC's highly rated, thoroughly Z-list variety extravaganza presided over by judges the Hoff, Sharon Osbourne, and Segway Accident Guy—and, of course, host Jerry Springer, who seemed all along to be secretly holding out hope that plus-sized semi-finalist girl group The Glamazons would trample human beatbox virtuoso Butterscotch for mackin' on their man.

But could anyone better sum up the competition's 60-seat-Vegas-showroom essence than last night's winner, ventriloquist-impressionist hybrid Terry Fator? We think not. Now $1 million richer, Fator's twenty, long years traveling the bumpy show business backroads have finally paid off. (If you're skeptical of his celebrated talents, we invite you to marvel at Winston the Turtle channeling Roy Orbison above.) America's ventriloquists, so long the bottom-feeders of the post-Vaudeville entertainment world, can finally hold their heads up high, just as soon as they're done cursing the fact that the best impression they can muster sounds something like Robin Williams doing Jack Nicholson eating a sandwich.