A whole lot of deflection and back peddling in the aftermath, that’s what. (Welcome MetaxuCafé readers, by the way.)
Because I’ve had my nose in a few books and have been pounding away at a keyboard lately, I missed that Justin Timberlake dissed American Idol winner Taylor Hicks:
Justin Timberlake is not in awe of Taylor Hicks’ talent.
“People think he looks so normal, and he’s so sweet and he’s so earnest, but he can’t carry a tune in a bucket,” Timberlake told Fashion Rocks, a supplement of Vanity Fair. Timberlake also thinks that Hicks’ fame is fragile. “If [Hicks] has any skeletons whatsoever, if God forbid, he’s gay, and if all these people in Mississippi who voted for him are like [then he takes on a thick southern accent], ‘Oh my god, I voted for a queer!’ It’s just too much pressure.”
I read this morning that reps for Timberlake issued a follow-up:
Ken Sunshine, Timberlake’s representative, said the 25-year-old singer’s comments “were taken completely out of context.”
“He has tremendous affection for Taylor Hicks’ success,” Sunshine told The Associated Press on Thursday. “He would never say anything that personal about somebody he’s never met. He only wishes him the best.”
Color me stupid, but what part of “can’t carry a tune with a bucket” is meant to be endearing that the Fashion Rocks writer mangled the context? Apparently I’m not alone in wondering. This came from Defamer yesterday:
We appreciate the clarification: Now that Sunshine mentions it, it is easy to see how a tremendously affectionate observation like “he can’t carry a tune in a bucket” can be twisted by a malicious journalist into coming off like some kind of value judgment.
I don’t care one way or the other what Timberlake thinks of Hicks or vice versa. I don’t care what Timberlake thinks of any other kind of music, either. But given what was said to the writer of the original piece, I want to know why he doesn’t sack up and either stand behind what he said or own up to a mistake (if, in fact, that’s what his original comments were).
Surely, Hicks is a big boy who has to understand that not everyone likes what he does… the same way Timberlake has to understand the same about his own work. It seems to me, and I think I’m right, that entertainers like Timberlake believe themselves to be artists—a group who, generally speaking, yearns for the platform to speak and be heard.
Instead he elected to blame the reporter. Sorry, Justin, that doesn’t make you an artist. It makes you a coward.
Tags: American_Idol, On music
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