Kelly Ripa says Clay Aiken acted inappropriately...

[Rhiannon]

Wrong thread........

I got the two threads about this mixed up!

[Nixsoaps]

I think it was inappropriate for Clay to do that because he came off as being rude. He was a guest, I don't want a guest in my home to do something disrespectful to me like that. If it was someone that she was friends with, such as in the picture of her and Regis above, then it would be a different story.

I do not think it was about germs, I think it was because Kelly was pissed that someone finally stopped her from talking.

And I am a Kelly Ripa fan. She needs to tone it down a bit.

[Q Steph]

On Wednesday, 'Extra' learned 'American Idol' season two runner-up Clay Aiken sent Kelly Ripa flowers after last week's hand over mouth moment on 'Live with Regis and Kelly', while Barbara Walters publicly declared on 'The View' that the resulting feud between Ripa and Rosie O'Donnell is dead.

[GBB]

I posted this in the Kelly/Rosie thread, but it' might fit better here, so I'm copying it over:

Check my avatar. My bias on this one is clear but I do think I can offer a perspective that hasn't been posted yet.

For whoever said that Clay and Kelly had never met before that day, not true. He's been on the show many times. I know some are saying that Clay was gunning for her from the beginning but I don't think that's what the tape shows at all. The first twenty minutes of the show is also on YouTube. Check it out. They were both trading zingers through the first half of the show, but appeared to be all in fun. She yanked him, he yanked back, the audience was laughing and enjoying it all. Clay has an extreme and very real phobia to cats (stems from running over a kitten when he was a teenager) and he told the producers about it. At one point Kelly was literally rubbing a cat photo in his face while he was cowering away from her. That could also be considered over the line, but I saw it for what it was, an attempt at being funny on her part. And it was funny. (I mean, who's afraid of cats?) But it was also very physical and in his face. He had reason to think she was comfortable with that kind of humor. At one point in the first half, he turned to Gelman and said, "I'm allowed to make fun of her, right?" and Gelman smiled and said "yeah." My point is, the first half went very well.

When the interview segment with Emmitt and Cheryl came up, Kelly asked all the questions. She leaned sort of across Clay and didn't let him get a word in. At one point he said something like "let me know when it's my turn to speak" and everyone laughed but she kept asking questions. Then he did the hand on the mouth thing. Big mistake? Yeah. He screwed up. But he was laughing and obviously did it playfully. It wasn't intended to be disrespectful but it was also immediately clear Kelly didn't like it one bit. Clay backed off immediately and the rest of the show seemed to go fine. He even sent the show to commercial break twice when she was too caught up in Mario Lopez to catch the cues. By the end of the show, Kelly was laughing and hanging on Clay's shoulder. He gave an interview to The Insider while still on the set of Live saying what a good time he had and how good Kelly was at her job, etc.

Then came Monday. Kelly took a full five minutes on Monday's show to berate Clay for what he had done. How was that professional? Wouldn't it have been better for her to speak with him privately after the show? What point was served in humiliating him publically for what was an honest mistake on his part? That's the reason Rosie brought it up on The View the next day. She's not the one who made a mountain out of a molehill; Kelly did that all by herself. Rosie was responding to Kelly's weird impassionate rant about it. Do I think Rosie was right about Kelly being homophobic when she said "I don't know where that hand has been?" Probably not. But Kelly is absolutely 100% lying when she says she was upset because "you don't put your hands over someone's mouth" and that she was worried because she has children and it was cold and flu season.

How do I know she was lying? Well, she wasn't so worried about germs a few weeks before when Howie Mandel was guest-hosting. She teased him about being a germaphobe and when he showed her the device he uses to open doors with (so he doesn't have to put his hand on the doornob) she LICKED ALL OVER IT AND PUT IT IN HER MOUTH. There are also at least two occasions (with video proof) where she has put her hand over Regis' mouth when he was speaking, one time when she stuck four fingers of her hand into her mouth and then rubbed it over Regis' face, two other occasions where Regis put his hands over HER mouth when she was speaking, and one more where Simon Cowell put his hand over her mouth when he was guest hosting. I guess she wasn't worried about where his hand had been.

Bottom line for me, Clay screwed up. He apologized to her after the show (a VIP guest of the woman who got the makeover was standing there when he did it). His mistake was just that. A misstep -- non-malicious. The same can't be said for Kelly's rant the following Monday, which I found self-indulgent and unprofessional and aimed squarely at getting back at him.

[JER Soaps Fan]

GBB, PLEASE know that whether other SONers will admit it, I will. You have SHOCKED THE HECK out of me with that last post. Kelly LICKED the device that Mandel uses to open doors? There were OTHER hand-on-mouth incidents?!! I'm starting to wonder about this girl now. All of a sudden, having a more balanced view on the events that occurred, Clay doesn't look so Lucifer.

[Meredith]

I think they're both inappropriate... and so overexposed.

Seing Kelly pop up on R&K, on AMC, and Hope & Faith in what seemed like a year made me wanna puke.

Her hands have been.. like everywhere!!!!!