EVERYBODY loves a rags-to-riches tale. And when that rags-to-riches tale happens to include a winner of "American Idol" – well, oh baby!So you can just imagine how beside myself I, a slobbering, shamelessly rabid "Idol" fan, was when a copy of the upcoming Lifetime movie, "The Fantasia Barrino Story: Life is Not a Fairy Tale," showed up in the office.Directed by Debbie Allen, the movie, based on Fantasia’s best-selling book of the same name, gives away a dirty little secret that the producers of "Idol" probably would rather have kept to themselves: They tried to get her to quit the show after she’d already made it to the finals.Why? Because they were afraid that the revelations that came out on the Internet during that time and spread faster than bird flu – that not only had she been a high-school dropout who had literacy issues, but that she was an unwed mother who had her daughter when she was in her early teens – would hurt the show.The suits at "Idol" pushed her to quit, but the kid pushed back. She’d been through too much to quit – again.Her mother had quit her dreams to have babies. Her grandmother (a minister) was a struggling unwed mother, and Fantasia knew that if she quit then, she’d face nothing more than life in the projects raising her daughter alone.Needless to say, she not only won that fight, but won the whole deal, and became 2004’s Idol winner.
NY Post
And I 100% agree with the producers. Fantasia by winning American Idol is suppose to be a role model and by not being able to read and by being a mother at 16 is not the best example. In a time when teenage pregnancies are down, it was not the best idea to have someone who is teenage mom represent America. Plus the screechy ugly singer who looks and sings like Donald Duck couldn’t fucking read. If you can’t read, you do not deserve to be an American Idol.
