Kelly Clarkson has never been one to bite her tongue. She has fought the music industry powers that be, even earning Simon Cowell's wrath at one point, and also probably robbing herself of even more stardom. She has also been repeatedly candid about her tumultuous love life, and has openly confronted questions about her fluctuating weight but she finally hit a nerve regarding one subject you are always guaranteed to hit a nerve with a sizable faction over: politics.
In a very surprising development, Clarkson opted to weight in on the 2012 presidential election cycle. That alone isn't terribly newsworthy. After all, celebrity endorsements are hardly anything new. However, it was the recently beleaguered Ron Paul from Clarkson's native Texas she threw her support behind that has resulted in a political firestorm on her Twitter and Facebook accounts. Mr. Paul has been under intense scrutiny over allegations of matters ranging from racism to private behind the scenes anti-Israel foreign policy rants.
I am personally unaware of her previously disclosing her political affiliation before now but one thing is clear: Kelly Clarkson, thru her own social media accounts, has made it abundantly clear that she is a registered Republican with Libertarian leanings although she also disclosed that she crossed party lines during the last election. Clarkson did however break with her party's political orthodox and declared her opposition to one party stance on one major issue.
This is a huge blow to the credibility of the Paul family on matters of race. While waging his successful senatorial campaign for the then retiring Jim Bunning's seat in Kentucky, Paul's son Rand Paul got himself into hot water over comments made to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow about the civil rights movement. It remains unclear so far if this will be a blow to Ms. Clarkson's credibility too. Will fans forgive her for being too uninformed because of the recent allegations or will they not give her the benefit of the doubt because they will feel she did know and tried acting otherwise? They could also pounce on her for not knowing, especially because of Congressman Paul's son's own problems last May, and also because Ms. Clarkson and Mr. Paul are both from Texas and there might be an additional expectation of substantive familiarity. Mr. Paul, in what is expected to be his last congressional term, represents the 14th district in Texas while Michael Burgess represents the 26th district and Joe Barton the 6th district, both districts covering Ms. Clarkson's native Fort Worth. Incidentally, both Mr. Burgess and Mr. Barton are members of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus.
Clarkson was immediately bombarded with angry Facebook comments and tweets. One user badgered the pop star more than once, starting with her decision to weight in as a celebrity in the first place, taunting her to the point where he finally received a defiantly upset response. It triggered another nasty rebuttal before Clarkson decided to stop engaging the dissenting aggressor altogether. Elliott-Jones continued on but I'll leave it to any curious parties to do their own research for the time being.
Clarkson did issue an apology later on while pleading with her fans to respectfully disagree with her after a whirlwind of shocked fans attacked her for supporting an accused homophobic racist and anti-Semite. Ms. Clarkson also denied knowing anything about the allegations of Mr. Paul engaging in racist behavior as well as harboring homophobic tendencies. One of the last tweets of the night from Clarkson was the James Patrick Kinney "The Cold Within" and after responding to a few more tweets, she probably quite happily retired for the evening. Himay Co. tweeted a question for her but at the time of this blog publishing, there had yet to be any reply from Ms. Clarkson. Himay Co. would also like to extend an open invitation to Ms. Clarkson to discuss her thoughts and responses concerning her foray into the political arena in a completely unfiltered manner as well as to promote her most recent effort Stronger which includes the hit title track. Himay Co. will continue to monitor this breaking story.
No comments:
Post a Comment