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Posted on 07/11/2002 6:14:32 PM PDT by Pokey78
The singer George Michael fears he may not be able to return to America because of the fury stirred by his single ridiculing the "war on terror".
The 39-year-old performer has also made a video to go with the record, Shoot The Dog, depicting Mr Blair as a poodle on the White House lawn.
In an interview to be broadcast tonight, he says the US media is portraying him as an al-Qa'eda sympathiser. He insists that he is "not anti-American in any sense" and that the recording was done "within the parameters of satire".
"I know I'm basically a good person whose two crimes appear to be that I'm gay and I've got a big mouth to go with it," he said. "It's only a bloody song."
The stir followed what he called a "damage control" phone interview with the US news network CNN. He claimed that the track was meant as an attack on Tony Blair over his relationship with President George W Bush, and the single was "never intended" for release in America.
However, seething fans flooded the station with calls abusing him. One caller, who gave her name as Leah from Florida, said: "You can't tell me that you did not intend to slam our country when you slam our President. By portraying him going to bed with your prime minister, you slam our country.
"You can talk about your own family, but I'll be danged if I'll let somebody else step in from the outside and talk about them."
The New York Post headlined a report "Pop Perv's 9/11 slur", saying that the single was "a tawdry tune". Michael was dismissed as "a washed-up pervert pop star".
Although his first solo album Faith reached No 1 in America in 1987, he has never been able to emulate that success since. His rock star image took a plunge when he was arrested in a Los Angeles public lavatory after exposing himself to a police officer in 1998.
Amid speculation that he may have dealt a fatal blow to his career in America, and possibly in Britain, Michael has now given an interview to Sir Trevor McDonald on ITV, speaking freely of his arrest.
"In order for me to speak out I have to open myself up to the possibility of a combination of humiliation which is always based around my sexuality - which I don't think is anything to be humiliated about - and pure fiction that should not be legal in the world today," he says.
"For some reason, I don't have a right to talk about anything because I got caught four years ago with a police officer in a Los Angeles toilet. Somehow it eradicates all possibility that what I'm saying might be for the best or is worthy of being discussed.
"I can't fight that kind of homophobia here and now. I believe in our country and probably in America too, there are a lot of people who think the two things are completely irrelevant to one another and that it is very convenient to attack me."
Referring to the CNN interview, he says: "I was trying to do some damage control. Because of that New York Post article I cannot return to America even though my partner lives there."
TONIGHT (6pm pdt/9pm edt) on UNSPUN!
ANN COULTER and JESSE LEE PETERSON!
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Bet he'd be singing a completely different tune about it being "only a bloody song" if it was a Charlie Daniels' song about hating British fags.
Hey George, it's not because you're gay -- it's because you're an a$$hole!!
It isn't any more offensive than what all the liberals spew about the president all the time. It is worse than offensive. It is just a stupid. More of an expose on this man's lack of imagination and talent than his political views.
Actually, only the US media has heard your song, Mr. Michael. The rest of the United States has not even heard of you. ;)
Perhaps he can tour with Michael Jackson in Outer Slovenia.
Ummm..perhaps, he might not want to come back here.
What's he doing, reading from his personal ads?
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