Voters back Idol star in sex scandal - 實境秀

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Voters back Idol star in sex scandal
March 2, 2007 at 08:40:00 AM

Sex scandal ups contestant's popularity.

Fans of American Idol US, TV's most popular program, Thursday gave their
backing to a female contestant purportedly shown in some X-rated Internet
photos, voting to keep her on the show.

Idol fans have flooded online chat rooms and blogs in recent days buzzing
over whether the photos really are of Antonella Barba and whether she'll get
kicked off Fox network's singing contest because of them.

Idol producers have shrugged off the controversy, and no mention of the
scandal was made during Thursday's show, when four of 20 remaining
contestants were sent home.

But it was not until the end of the show that the fate of Barba was revealed,
when the host called three women to the front of the stage to announce which
one was out.

Barba, a 20-year-old former college student from New Jersey, was one of 20
competitors who last week advanced to the latest round, but some expected her
to be voted off because of her mediocre singing and criticism from the
judges.

But others said her lack of talent may not be that important at this stage of
the show.

"If a sex tape of Antonella makes the Internet she could win this
competition...now that would be rather humorous," said entertainment news
blog Bumpshack following the show.

The anonymously posted images include those of a young woman lying on her
back covered in rose petals, posing in her underwear, sitting on a toilet and
sitting among a group of topless women on a beach, hands over their breasts.
Others show a woman performing oral sex on a man.

Though all are purported to be images of Barba, none of the subjects of the
photos has been positively identified.

The episode was reminiscent of a similar scandal back in 2003, when
contestant Frenchie Davis, whose powerhouse vocals dazzled the judges, was
dismissed from the show following the discovery that she had posed topless on
a porn site.

A spokesman for Fox, a unit of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., said the network
does "not comment on the personal lives of our show participants." Nothing
has been said on the show itself about the scandal.

Celebrity judge Simon Cowell and fellow producer Nigel Lythgoe said in
separate media interviews this week that Barba's future is entirely up to
fans who vote on the contestants.

Appearing at a Playboy mansion party on Wednesday, Cowell said, "I think it's
disgraceful that so-called friends would sell these pictures. It's private
property."

Barba has kept mum about the photos. But her friend Amanda Coluccio, a fellow
American Idol hopeful eliminated from the contest earlier this season, said
only the least graphic photos are of Barba.

The more provocative pictures are of someone else, she told the New Jersey
Star-Ledger.

"I've studied them. It's not her nose. She's never had [acrylic nail] tips in
her life. She's the least slutty person I know," Coluccio was quoted as
saying.


真是有趣哈哈哈。XD

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