Musician Amanda Palmer inspired outrage with her poem for alleged terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, but it's not the first time she's riled people up. Here's a look at some of her past controversies, and how fans and critics responded.
1. "Fame Whoring"
Via: Jason Merritt / Getty Images
In 2010, Amanda Palmer attended the Golden Globes with husband Neil Gaiman, whose film Coraline was nominated. She was criticized by blogs for her unconventional dress and unshaved armpits — absurd complaints, to be sure. But her response, a blog post titled "Fame Whoring," was also irksome. "I do not ever go to the movies," she wrote. "I have almost no awareness of famous Hollywood people. when I'm in my chiropractor's office I will occasionally read a tabloid, or I will get wind of some cultural phenomenon through links that people send me. ... No offense to Neil, but if I hadn't been his main squeeze, the chances of me seeing it would have hovered close to below zero."
Her condescending attitude rubbed people the wrong way, particularly the way she seemed to dismiss celebrity culture while also participating in it. As one commenter astutely pointed out, "You've mentioned before, and you mention in this blog that you don't watch movies, you don't move in the Hollywood world at all, and so this is all foreign to you. I get that. Yet you go to that world and proceed to take every opportunity to make fun of it, complain about it, and criticize it without actually trying to take any of it in, it seems. It felt like the equivalent of an American going to another country and wondering 'why they don't speak goddamn English!'"
2. "Oasis"
Source: youtube.com
In 2007, Amanda Palmer recorded the song "Oasis" with Ben Folds. It's about a girl who is date raped and gets an abortion but says she doesn't care because the band Oasis received her fan mail. "Oasis" includes the lyrics, "When I got to the bedroom/ There was somebody waiting / And it isn't my fault / That the barbarian raped me." She was criticized for making light of rape, and she again responded with a blog post. She defended the song, writing, "Humor and darkness are opposite sides of the same coin. There is a reason that our funniest comedians have usually had bizarre and fucked-up childhoods. We can't afford to abandon the disposition of humor, if we do….we're lost."
Many did not agree, including some victims of sexual violence. One fan responded, "I love your album but I can't listen to Oasis. It makes me feel panicky and upset (possibly triggering from what happened to me, I don't know). I think a lot of this rests with the black-and-white argument that things are either funny or sad and in order to get through the darkness you *have* to laugh. It's not true for me... I do laugh at myself some of the time but there are some experiences in my life that I don't ever want to feel like I should laugh at and I think being raped is one of them." The "Oasis" music video was banned in the UK.
