Country star and no fan of Rocks Off Blake Shelton has now made it two for two in voicing his displeasure with members of the Houston music media. Late Tuesday night the "Honeybee" singer went after Chronicle critic Joey Guerra on Twitter, reacting in a most unsportsmanlike manner to Guerra's effectively wishing "good riddance" to Holly Tucker, a favorite of Shelton's on NBC's popular singing competition The Voice.
"Holly Tucker is gone. It took much too long," wrote Guerra, who recaps The Voice for the Chronicle's television blog Tubular. "But finally. Back to Baylor University in Waco for you, madam."
Guerra's comments prompted the following tweets from Shelton:
Damn, dude. We don't watch The Voice, and we realize there's probably a lot at stake for these contestants, who are young and whose feelings can easily bruise. But criticism comes with the territory, especially in reality TV. We've always known Guerra to be pretty even-handed -- but more importantly, if he wanted to be snarky, he certainly could have been much snarkier here.
Defending Tucker's honor by calling Guerra "chickenshit" is probably not doing him any favors in the court of public opinion; the story has already been picked up by one of the top national country-music blogs, The Boot, and is no doubt sending Shelton's PR damage-control specialists into a tizzy.
Of course this couldn't help remind of Rocks Off of a few months ago, when we ourselves were the targets of the "Honey Bee" singer's 140-character ire. In our review of his March 15 performance at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, we said this: "If it's possible for someone to be both smug and shiftless at the same time, Shelton was."
The next Monday, a fan of his tweeted him Rocks Off's review, which prompted him to hit us up at the main Houston Press Twitter account:
Three months later, we stand by what we wrote, especially after Shelton's shenanigans Tuesday night. Man, we realize The Voice has been a pretty lucrative boon for your career, but still: it's just a TV show.
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