IS NICKI MINAJ GETTING "AMERICAN IDOL" TO LOSE FANS OR SHE JUST WHAT THE SHOW NEEDS?

NICKI MINAJ

Here’s what’s right with “American Idol” this season: Nicki Minaj.

Here’s what’s wrong with “American Idol” this season: Nicki Minaj.

That’s because Minaj is, without a doubt, the most polarizing presence since the humorless Kara DioGuardi.

While DioGuardi often alienated fans and judges, Minaj seems to disrespect fans — and to disdain two of the four judges most of the time.

That doesn’t mean her attitude makes for bad TV — in fact, at the beginning of the season, she was such a young, fresh breath of air, even I, who was beginning to feel that “AI” was getting as weary as my broken foot, began perking up with the wacky, weirdo nicknames she would give people.

Yes, at first I loved the Little Ladybug and thought she was finger-lickin’ good — in a Top Hat kinda way.

But then somewhere along the line — perhaps because she’s the only genuinely funny judge, or maybe it’s because she became the breakout judge this season — Minaj increasingly became a one-woman show.

She arrived waaay late for a live show. That was not just being a diva, but it was disrespectful and dumb.

OK, it can happen. What shouldn’t ever happen, however, is what is happening now. The gum-chewing for starters. No, it doesn’t make her look like a rebel, give her street cred or bring in those coveted younger viewers. (She could show up naked and under-40s wouldn’t care — not when the producers insist on making contestants sing 50- year-old songs like dead rockers and half-dead R&B singers!)

Sorry, Cucaracha, but chewing gum while chewing the fat with 13 million people watching is downright dopey.

Then there’s the increasingly disturbing disdain of everyone on the panel except for Keith Urban, the only one she faces these days as she turns her back on Randy Jackson and Mariah Carey.

At first it seemed like she was working one of the funny, fake feuds that “Idol” suits have been trying to recreate since the original badass/good-time fights between Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell.

But it seems like genuine disregard. Sure, one of the things that makes a show like this work is the disagreements and anger between the judges, but you still have to feel that the judges also care for one another.

Minaj is acting like those friends we all have who are so publicly dismissive and disdainful of their spouses that it makes us disrespect them.

No doubt but that Minaj is responsible for reviving “American Idol,” and she is the only one gutsy enough to admit the brutal truth.

She says what we think, like telling contestants to ignore Jimmy Iovine, who lives in the past and throwing the boy group off stage last Wednesday night after their cheese-fest version of the Four Tops (or is it One Top by now?) “I Can’t Help Myself Sugar Pie Honey Bunch.”

But the fact that she refused to save Devin — in my opinion, the best male vocalist they’ve had in years — was irresponsible, irrational and ignorant.

Then, over the weekend, she got into a Twitter fight with the kid.

“America r the ‘potential’ fans,” she tweeted Friday. “U MUST win them over. ‘Saves’ are bulls---t and they know it”