Just to clear up any misunderstanding (a number of people emailed me privately), I am not angry at the Big Apple Circus for hosting Britney Spears, just disappointed that a much greater opportunity was missed. On the contrary, I think Ms. Spears was an extremely poor guest.
I would liken it to being invited into someone else's home only to tell them that they are stupid, their spouse is fat, their kids are ugly, the house is a dump and that dinner wasn't very good.
It is just bad manners to treat your host so poorly.
Not that Ms. Spears did anything out of character. Her lip-synched performance was the same tacky, tasteless warmed over Madonna that she's been selling for years.
What I objected to so strongly was that she decided to theme her album and tour around "circus" without spending so much as a moment learning what a circus actually is.
See, she thinks that her life is like a circus. Really? How so? I watched the video and I still don't see any tangible connection between the tabloid hungry celebu-tard lifestyle she is internationally famous for and any aspect of the circus as I know it.
Had she actually sung, selected a better song (one that didn't sound like a half-forgotten Janet Jackson album track that you didn't really care about from 20 years ago) and actively collaborated with the stellar cast of this year's Big Apple Circus she might have created something really interesting; something of merit that was mutually beneficial to both parties.
Instead she claimed to be like a "ringleader" in the "center of the ring" and prance around like the chowderheaded piece of fluffy puff pastry that she is, loudly proclaiming her inflated sense of self-importance while surrounded by the cast of HBO's Carnevale and some members of the Red Triangle Circus Gang from Batman Returns.
Yup, that's circus for 'ya, in all of it's glory.
With such a wealth of talent in this year's show it's a shame that she and her handlers weren't more interested in promoting circus in general and the Big Apple Circus specifically, rather than choosing to callously exploit it.
But then, exploitation is really what the Britney Spears story is all about, isn't it?
I mean how much can you blame her? She doesn't really strike me as a terribly bad person. Just a sad, undereducated young woman ill-equipped to deal with the machine that is eating her alive for the amusement of a global audience.
An audience that now thinks that the Big Apple Circus is a tawdry little Fellini-esque museum piece that condones keeping women in cages.
That said, once again I remind you that I am fully aware that absolutely no one involved gives a fig what I think.
Anyway, here's a clip from the Today Show promoting a previous edition of the BAC with the type of media exposure that might actually bring paying customers in to see the show for themselves.
And Al Roker makes a comment at the end far more risque than anything Britney did...
