Entertainment

People Are Pissed at Britney Spears Again

by Alicia Lutes

Britney Spears surrounds herself with "adorable" and "hilarious" gay people, at least so speaketh the pop princess on Monday morning during a radio interview. And apparently because either it's a) a slow news day, or b) we're desperate to be angry about something other than our shutdown government run by babies, but everyone has decided to be offended. Which is silly. But here we are on the Internet — home to every non-story story, ever — so I suppose we have to discuss why it is that what Spears said is really not all that offensive, even though some mind find it pandering.

Do you think Britney Spears is a smart woman? You probably should, considering all the success she's had in her career (regardless of how sad her eyes make us feel, it seems). She's also had a really, really fucking tough go of it (2007, never forget) on top of being the most viewed, most popular, and most oversexed woman in the world at one point, so she knows a thing or two about overcoming obstacles. Plus, she's an entertainer in a creative field — a place where the versatile and dexterous minds of those who've overcome adversity often shine — so is it really all that surprising that she is surrounded by and enjoys the company of frank and endearing people who are themselves regardless of the mountain of bullshit they regularly face?

Besides, just because she's calling the gay people she's met and loves "hilarious" and "adorable" (adorable seeming to be Spears' go-to outlook on everything for, oh, forever), doesn't mean she's saying all gay people are hilarious and adorable and exclusively so — just the ones she likes. Is that pandering to an audience, or patronizing them? No, because she did not say "Attention, Universe/Kokopelli/Jesus/The Guy Who Invented Mattresses/Satan: I, Britney Jean Spears, would like to proclaim that each and every single gay person that was or ever will be on this planet we call Earth, to be seen as both 'hilarious' and 'adorable' near-exclusively, from this day until the end of days."

No. In fact, she said — in response to a question from the radio DJs at 99.7 NOW FM in San Francisco regarding whether or not she has a group of gay people that influences her work — simply: "A lot of my hair stylists and my beauty team that I work with are gay, so I hang out with gays a lot and I just think they're adorable and hilarious." Which is probably the most blasé thing way you could describe a group of people you consider your friends, ever. Really, if anything, they should be upset that she didn't do more than just randomly pick a couple generic adjectives to describe them.

But, eh, if you're really into gobbling up non-controversy controversy, feel free to listen to the whole interview below: