The trouble with Adam

Let's start with full disclosure.

I've never seen Adam Lambert perform (for that matter, I've never seen American Idol).  I've read much about him, about his extraordinary voice toward his androgynous dress toward his weather-vaned sexual appetites.  From what I have read in the past, I did not jaw-drop when I read what went down at the American Music Awards.

After Madonna and Brittany Spears mid-performance tonsilectomy illicited little more than a nation-wideee yawn, it became clear that someone had dismantled Pandora's box and burned it on the pire of responsibility and discretion.  Why should anyone be shocked (shocked!) when Mr. (and I use that term biologically) Lambert kisses a man amidst pelvic thrusts into the faces of female dancers during his performance at the aforementioned event?

"I admit I did get carried away, but I don't see anything wrong with it."  Ah, thanks "Mr." Lambert.  He further states his goal was to promote "expression and artistic freedom."  Isn't that just like an artist?  Sounds pretty planned from that statement, but then comes ""Adrenaline is a crazy, crazy, crazy feeling. Some of the things I love most about performing is when you're up there and all of the sudden you just have these feelings, this rush that comes over you."  So which is it?  Planned "art" or heat of the moment (apologies to Asia)?

He does bring up an interesting point.  In his interview on CBS' Early Show, he noted the double-standard in the media.  Janet Jackson does similar things at the same event and she gets no press.  I guess there were no wardrobe malfunctions that day.

Had "Mr." Lambert shut his cake-hole at that point, I would have sighed in disappointment and gone about my day, but he just kept talking.

"I'm not a babysitter.  I'm a performer."

He flipped my switch. 

Not a babysitter?!?  Let me translate.  "I can do what I please.  No one has a moral ground from which they can say what I have done is "wrong."  I have no responsibility for what I do.  The fact that I have decreed what I do 'art' trumps an indictment that my be cast against me.  If your kids saw my performance and you happen to find it troublesome, that's your problem.  I am an aritist."

What a load of farm fertilizer!  Utter autonomy.  Answerable to none.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is not America.  At least it's not the America envisioned at its inception.

Such fatuous statements as "Mr." Lambert's have littered the media with regularity in the past decade.  "I'm not a role model.  I'm an athlete."  Ah, got it.  "I am not a role model.  I'm a president.  I did not have sex with that woman in the Oval Office.  I--um--was briefing--er--um--debriefing..."

Here's the rub.  You are a role model.  You are an example to everyone you meet every day.  If God gives you the opportunity to have an extraordinary stage upon which to play, then your responsibility to your fellow man increases manifold.  You have responsibilities to your coworkers and your bosses.  You have responsibility to the staff that supports you.  If you are a celebrity (athletic, "arts," politics), you have a responsibility to those who appreciate your work.  And what about the responsibility to the God who created you?

When you have national (international?) viewership, adrenaline does not excuse eye-gouging, a double-bird flip-off, or behavior that flies in the face of the mores of the lion's share of the viewership.  Adam Lambert disavows his responsibility to anyone but the muse of Art. 

And that is the problem.
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(image Copyright from Robert Sebree, Billboard Magazine)