Throwing cold water on the JLO parade...

I've noticed everyone seems to love JLO. I've had my ups and downs over the years with liking her and not liking her. Bottom line on her is that in real life she's a crappy person. She is notoriously difficult to deal with, and specifically it's the "little guy" type that she clashes with. Camera and makeup assistants, dressing room people, police officers, security people... there are dozens and dozens and dozens of stories that have come out over the years about her, everyone agrees she's just a raging b. She has outlandish demands for her dressing room... everything must be white, from the bottled water to the candles to the candy. There have been numerous times when entire concerts have been held up for hours because JLO refused to get dressed for the show because she noticed the particular brand of honey she wants for her dressing room was wrong. She fires assistants for the slightest things, including supposedly refusing to hire pretty girls as assistants because they take away attention from her. Many of them have gone on to say working for her was a living hell. One of her worse stories was abusing some cops... one time she was filming a movie and decided she just HAD to call her boyfriend, Puff Daddy. Her phone didn't have reception, so she walked up to a cop and demanded to use his phone, saying it was an emergency. She then proceeded to call Puff Daddy, talked to him for 15 to 20 minutes, talking about stupid crap. Eventually the cop asked her to end the call since it obviously wasn't an emergency was tying up a police line... she screamed and yelled at him and called him names, to the point where he had to threaten her with arrest to calm her down. There have been scores, hundreds of accounts of people who have said they've asked her for autographs and have not only been refused, but in many cases cussed at and asked to leave the room.

As for "singing" career, let's get a few things straight. Fact is, she's not a particularly successful singer. Her first couple of albums had a couple of minor hits, but since 2004 or so, her albums don't sell very well and quickly dropped off the charts. That's why she was dropped from her record label. The fact that she has had some success is an example of how someone who can spend money and attract attention can have, with a little talent and a little luck, a brief music career. She spent MILLIONS of dollars having those songs written and produced by the top hitmakers, and MILLIONS of dollars promoting them and advertising her albums. There was so much momentum in terms of dollars spent and promotion that an album of alley cats singing Christmas carols would have ended up selling enough copies to be considered a minor hit. As for the songs, I realize this is subjective, but I think they're crap, the serious music critics think it's crap, and the only people who liked them were kids who quickly moved on to the next big thing. Her "hits" are not treasured pop songs that are still remembered or played. The truth is, she was more in the realm of an Ashlee Simpson type of person, who briefly had a moderate run of success when the whole music biz was behind her, but is now very much a forgotten afterthought. She doesn't sing particularly well... though neither does someone like Britney Spears. But don't mistake her for a Britney, she was never even a shadow of that kind of success.

As for her film career... I will say I think she's not a horrible actress. In fact I've liked her at times. That having been said, again it's a case of all bark and no bite, all smoke and mirrors. She is NOT a movie star. She had a couple of very, very minor hits. Most of her movies lost tremendous amounts of money, in fact a couple of her movies were such spectacular money losers that they bankrupted producers and toppled the studios that released them, to the point where careers were destroyed. Jersey Girl and Gigli cost a combined 15o million to make, and earned back about a combined 5 million. Gigli in particular was one of the worst movies ever made according to many critics, and literally broke records for money losing films. Since 2004 or so they've stopped putting her in lead roles in movies because the simple, unarguable fact is that she's boxoffice poison. If she's in a minor, supporting role the movie has a chance, but if she's the star, no one is going to see the movie. Period. In the last five years she's appeared in six movies, and they all flopped bigtime. So no, she isn't a movie star by any means. What she is a person who was quite famous for a while so Hollywood decided to try and TURN her into a star, but it backfired bigtime.

She has done quite well in other aspects of her career, it must be said.

Bottom line is, she's not a good singer, was never a particularly successful singer either, she isn't a movie star, and she has a reputation as being one of the biggest megalomaniacs and meanest people in show business.

I can already hear everyone rushing to her defense, talking about how you never really know what someone is like, all the stories could be made up, etc. Truth is, stories about her being a spoiled brat started surfacing ten years ago, and they never stopped coming out with new tales of her being a problem. Where there's smoke there's usually fire, and in the case of JLO, there's metric tons of smoke, with sparks and the scent of charred wood everywhere, so there must be fire.

I also have always felt she is racist, I've seen it and heard it from her many times, and in VERY subtle ways I still see it on Idol. She doesn't like white people. She grew up poor in the Bronx, and she's part of that crowd that thinks white people are idiots and uncool and just totally unhip. Disagree with me if you will, but WATCH her in the coming weeks and see if you can see it. I bet you will.