Mmmm...there is more than a little bit of a phony-ness to him.

You can't deny that he acts to provoke a reaction at times. The judges clearly know all these little details about the contestants (dad dying, weird habits, whatever) and work to play them up, because ultimately it is a show for our entertainment and we want to see people either looking like freaks or like charity cases so we can feel all sympathetic and so on.

I respect him in that he's good at creating entertainment, but not always that he's genuine.