The closing performance of last night’s American Music Awards is generating quite the buzz today — and if he subscribes to the “any publicity is good publicity” theory, then Adam Lambert must be positively ecstatic this morning.
Last night, though, he was on the defensive.
“I do feel like there’s a bit of a double standard in the entertainment community, on television, on radio,” Lambert told CNN backstage. “I feel like women performers have been pushing the envelope, especially, for the past 20 years. And all of the sudden a male does it and everybody goes ‘Oh, we can’t show that on TV.’ For me, that’s a form of discrimination and a double standard. And that’s too bad.”
Sorry, but no. That won’t fly. Pushing a dancer’s face into one’s groin and overtly fingering and groping in another’s crotch isn’t problematic because people are homophobic. Adam Lambert’s getting slammed because he threw out a raunchy mix of bondage, soft porn, and not-so-implicit sex during a prime-time broadcast.
And speaking for myself, that’s really the bottom-line problem. I’m pretty much sick to death of having to send Adorable Child out of the room, or bar her from seeing certain performances on YouTube, because of the utterly inappropriate worldview of a disconnected entertainment industry.
Furthermore, the suggestion that people would be just dandy with it had it been heterosexual, or performed by a female, is flat-out wrong. While I’m absolutely sure that some folks are reacting negatively because overt gayness freaks them out, a woman emulating oral sex with a man, or fingering his genitalia (much less both) would also have brought widespread condemnation and revulsion. This simply does not have a place in our family rooms.
In fact, the correct word here is not “discrimination”, Mr. Lambert. It’s “vulgarity”:
1. characterized by ignorance of or lack of good breeding or taste: vulgar ostentation.
2. indecent; obscene; lewd: a vulgar work; a vulgar gesture.
3. crude; coarse; unrefined: a vulgar peasant.
And it’s a gender-neutral adjective.
The criticism isn’t coming because he’s gay. He’s getting hammered because there’s nothing ground-breaking about vulgarity. It’s been common in sleazy bars and porn theaters for decades.
Still — there is an upside to all this controversy. It’s allowed last night’s off vocals and clumsy onstage fall to be completely overlooked.
Maybe that’s what he’s hoping for.