A Published Twit

So, this was kind of cool. Entertainment Weekly picked up one of my tweets for a story last weekend.  

Twitter is a funny animal in the social media jungle. On Sunday afternoon I started to get alerts that I was being retweeted and followed from far afield. Soon a woman here in London let me know about the EW story and it started to make sense. I didn’t write this tweet with anything more than genuine emotion arising from a Fox News babbler’s criticism of singer Kelly Clarkson’s weight.

If you’ve seen Clarkson over the years since she was the first winner of American Idol, you know her size has gone up and down. In the entertainment business, size 2 is the norm for women although in the greater population the average size is 14.  And they had better stay stick-thin or they’ll hear about it. Supermodel Gisele popped out an infant and went back to work in a bikini in a couple of weeks, so why can’t you? You’re just not trying hard enough.

Kelly Clarkson is a new Mom and beautifully normal. By normal I mean she doesn’t work out with a personal trainer four hours a day or think it’s wise to subsist on a lettuce leaf and chickpea for dinner until she’s back into her skinny jeans. But Chris Wallace on Fox News took several fat-shaming shots at her the other day and it inspired me to tweet a reminder of what Kelly Clarkson really is. Have you ever heard this woman sing? She’s got a one-in-a-million talent and that’s what we should be focusing on. Entertainment Weekly picked up the story and used a couple of tweets to show the range of reaction. Mine was one of them.

Fox News is an oxymoron if ever I’ve heard one. It’s the most biased so-called reporting in all of journalism. We treat people terribly because of their looks. Have you ever stopped to think about why it was so “surprising” that Susan Boyle had the voice of an angel? It’s only because she didn’t look like one. The time has passed for judgments of this sort. And anyone who looks like Chris Wallace should be grateful that television producers can see past someone’s lack of beauty and put them on air for other reasons. Presumably, because he’s smart. And if he’s so smart, he should be able to learn from this mistake he has made.

A bit of the EW story including my tweet that read: Kelly Clarkson is an amazing talent, a busy artist and a new Mom. Screw you Chris Wallace.