A few points…
1) Programs are edited to death – you dont know if they were turning their nose up at her looks, her comments about wanting to be a famous singer or indeed why they were screwing their nose up – personally I screwed my nose up and chuckled due to the fact that so many that come on and say “I want to be X” are generally useless and I think I have pretty good reason to chuckle based on the many previous acts that were utter tripe, good looking or not. Ultimately no-one respects people based on looks in these things, they either are talented or not – whether she is your taste in looks or not is entirely unimportant.
2) I dont think they patronised her, I think they were genuinely shocked by how good she was and how she’d turned the crowd around, and were just saying so. Seems fair to me – better than “ding ding..you’re through, g’bye”.
Dont get me wrong, I think its stupid how people are famous just for being attractive and talentless, just as much as the next person but regardless of how everyone wants to seem PC – we all judge people on looks to some extent, its a natural human reaction when you dont know what’s behind the outward appearance, we then change our opinions as more info is learned. There really isnt any other way around it, unless you assume everyone is talented and godly every time, which is utterly unrealistic?
Ah well, she’s good (didnt think she was amazing) so I’m glad she got to sing.