Want to Know How to P.O. Kat McPhee?

Let an intern interview her. Listen to this astoundingly rude interview conducted by an intern at Washington, D.C., radio station Hot 99.5. "American Idol" Season 5 runner-up Katharine McPhee had been scheduled for an in-studio chat, but a delayed plane forced the interview to be conducted via phone. The station had been pre-warned not to ask McPhee, who was visiting D.C. for a Hillary Clinton fundraiser, any personal questions.

Why morning deejay Kane allowed his intern Ally to conduct the interview at all, much less without pre-instruction, is anyone's guess. Was the intention to get laughs? Perhaps. The results were pretty disasterous. Ally asked how old Kat’s boyfriend is (42), if she’s into older guys, what’s the deal with "Idol" not having her on the Season 6 finale (they didn't invite her back), if she's engaged, if it's hard to stay loyal to her boyfriend on the road, and what it was like getting felt up by Tyra Banks. Ally failed to even ask why McPhee was in D.C. (actually, she admitted on air she didn't care why McPhee was in D.C.). It sounded to us like an intentional shanghai of the singer and budding film actress.

Here are two versions on the interview. The first is with commentary from Ally's boss and on-air colleagues, the second the interview sans commentary. Either way, you can hear that Katharine is clearly annoyed by the whole thing.

Hot 99.5 Intern Ally interviews Katharine McPhee (includes commentary from on-air staffers)

Hot 99.5 Intern Ally interviews Katharine McPhee (no commentary)

IS TAYLOR HICKS THE OTHER MAN IN LYDERS' LIFE?

There has been specula-
tion on a number of Web sites, including The National Ledger, The Post-Gazettet and NBC/11 about whether Caroline Lyders and Season 5 American Idol Taylor Hicks are involved in a love triangle. It seems the new couple may have a very good reason for the "just friends" mantra they dished out after being spotted getting cozy on a beach in Hawaii.

According to Star magazine, Lyders the co-anchor of the weekday edition of WISN 12 News This Morning, has a longtime boyfriend, insurance businessman Aaron Ruffcorn. What's the deal? Is Taylor Hicks the "other man" or is he just dating the runaround? Heaven knows.

On May 24, the pair was photographed romping in the surf and smooching passionately on a beach in Maui, with Caroline sporting a teeny black string bikini – much to grinning Taylor ’s obvious delight! Raised in Iowa and a graduate of Columbia University School of Journalism, Caroline shares a musical link to Hicks; she’s an award-winning pianist. Things reportedly began to heat up between the duo after she interviewed him in March 2007, but they kept the affair under wraps until their Maui vacation. Lyders recently admitted, "Taylor and I are friends. Beyond that, I'd rather not comment on my personal life."

But the new romance is hitting a sour note with someone else – namely, her longtime boyfriend, insurance businessman, Aaron Ruffcorn. In fact after the photos of Taylor and Caroline's beach romp surfaced, Star contacted Aaron's Iowa-based dad, Mitchell Ruffcorn, who insisted, "My son is dating her."

Aaron's dad says the couple fell in love while in high school. Aaron wrote on an Internet portfolio, "My commitment to my girlfriend Caroline was both the catalyst and the anesthetic for the move [to Ohio , then to Milwaukee]."

Aaron’s father tells Star, "The last time I saw her was at Christmas 2006. She was with our family for the holiday, and we all had a lot o fun. I know they have been talking about marriage for some time." His father also said they've been talking marriage for some time. His mother told Star that the two are currently dating, but Ruffcorn himself seems less certain.

So what went wrong between Aaron and Caroline in the months since Christmas? Perhaps Taylor being in the right place? Aaron tells Star, "There is nothing but love and respect between Caroline and myself. There is a lot of history between us; all decisions we make are together. Whether there's a future for Caroline and Taylor, I don't know. As to whether there's still a future [for us] at this point, stranger things have happen [sic].' "

In other words his relationship with Caroline is over. In the meantime, if Lyders is expecting to someday walk down the aisle with Hicks, she may have a long wait. Hick's grandmother, Joni Hicks, tells Star, "Girlfriends require attention and time. That's absolutely what Taylor does not have! He's never been close to getting married, and he's in no hurry." Perhaps, but if it's a soul thing, maybe he's finally gonna move on to marriage just to feel that way, grandma!

JORDIN SPARKS OVERWEIGHT? C'MON!

Is it not bad enough that Jordin Sparks will probably be "persuaded" to lose weight anyway now that she's celeb royalty without the tabs and some idiot named MeMe Roth (doesn't that first name speak volumes?)getting into debates and calling her overweight? Overweight! She's 5 foot 10 inches and a a size 12! This is overweight? What has happened to the universe? Normal and healthy are not sizes 0-4. Even 6 in on the small side. Normal and healthy for women are sizes 8-12 (sorry guys). Even 14 is not out of the question.

As Salon.com says, anti-obesity crusader Roth, who is wound tight as a spring and is the leader of a wannabe movement called National Action Against Obesity, is leading a misguided crusade against what she perceives as tubby "American Idol" contestants. She was probably hoping someone such as LaKisha Jones would win so she could make her the poster girl for the nation's obesity epidemic. Jones, for all that heavenly voice, was actually obese, whereas bubbly belter Jordin Sparks is merely kittenishly chubby. No matter. Roth was camped out at Fox News (click to watch video) before Sparks finished the song that got her into the finals. Her message? Skinny Blake Lewis should win [the singing contest] because Sparks, according to Roth's warped standards, is fat.

Bizarro lady also has a blog called "Wedding Gown Challenge" which states:

"Annually, I invite all women to gather with their girlfriends, pull their wedding gowns from storage, and put them back on. The big laughs should come from the dated styles, not busted zippers.

And for the Wedding Gown Challenge, the wedding gown is symbolic of a time in a woman’s life when she’s entered into adulthood at a healthy weight, and intends to maintain that weight for a lifetime. Your wedding ceremony may have been Catholic, Cosmic or Common Law. You may have donned puffy whites or a scuba suit. The Wedding Gown Challenge message is to maintain a healthy weight for a lifetime. And that’s true too for whomever wore the tux."

It all sounds reasonable until she goes off on children such as Jordin Sparks and starts spouting her group's theory on "Secondhand Obesity," which freelance journalist Lindsay Beyerstein, deriding Roth in her blog Majikthise explains, is meant to denote "obesity handed down from one generation to the next, as well as from citizen to citizen."

Yes, that's right says Beyerstein, MeMe Roth's group asserts that obesity is a communicable condition. Hence Roth's willingness to berate Sparks. According to her crackpot supposition, Jordin is a "vector for fatness." Or "A veritable typhoid Mary, scarcely afflicted herself, but suppressing national leptin levels over the airwaves."

Scarier still is Roth's motivation to keep people thin. Katie Allison Granju points out in her blog, The Pop Culturephile, that in Roth's Wedding Gown Challenge blog you find this little tidbit:

Q: Any special motivation?
MeMe Roth: I see staying fit as an obligation to my self and my family. Back in the 80s when I was Van Halen’s "number one fan," I did get the chance to meet the band. Eddie Van Halen made me promise I'd never get fat. He said I looked like something out of Playboy. Talk about making a girl swoon... I kept my part of the bargain; maybe he'll come to the Wedding Gown Challenge?

Er, yeah, thanks. Sure we'll take Eddie Van Halen as our health and appearance role model, an alcoholic and smoker who keeps puffing away to this day, even though he's gone through mouth cancer. And you're taking advice from him on what you -- and everybody else on earth -- should look like? Someone who looks as if they belong on Skid Row? NOT! Have you seen how sexily healthy he looks lately? Glance to your right. Perhaps he suggested to ex-wife Valerie Bertinelli that she join Jenny Craig if she wanted another shot at his wasted wreck of a body. He's what probably drove her to overeating.

Fortunately, according to People magazine, Sparks seems to have a pretty healthy attitude about her body. People says winning Idol she not only won a singing competition, but a lifelong battle to accept herself.

"I think it really helped boost her self-esteem and made her realize she's beautiful as she is," her grandmother, Pam Weidmann said. Jordin's mom, Jodi, says of her daughter's May 23 victory: "It was huge to see her confidence level grow. ... She's standing taller now."

At 5'10" and size 12 by the time she was in junior high school, "I stood out everywhere," says Jordin, who use to hunch, wear oversize clothing and search in vain for her size at teen mall stores. "I'd look at my friends who were just naturally tiny, and maybe they weren't even a size 2, but they were smaller than me and that was good enough. I was like, 'Oh, why can't I look like that?' "

Jordin tried dieting every now and then, but failed because, she says, giggling, "I like food too much to do it. I would try, like, 'Hey I'm going to diet and I'll be a size 8 by the end of the summer,' but it never worked out."

One day at their local mall, Jordin and her mom came across the newly launched plus-size store Torrid. "It was like angels – 'ahhhhhhhh!' – shining down on it because it's sizes 12 and up. They have clothes for girls who aren't an average size so they can totally feel cute and flirty and still keep up with the latest trends," Jordin says, noting that being the store's smallest size was "great for my self-esteem."

In fact, just before auditioning for Idol, Jordin landed a modeling gig for Torrid. "I think it really helped boost her self-esteem and made her realize she's beautiful as she is," says her grandmother.

Her parents' attitudes also helped Jordin feel good about herself. "My mom and my dad always were saying, 'You're beautiful, Jordin,' " says the Idol winner, whose father Phillippi, 38, a former star cornerback for the New York Giants, is 5'11" (mom is 5'6").

After nailing her Idol audition, Jordin's confidence began to soar. For the first time in her life, she embraced her right to bare arms. Before the show, "I liked to wear sleeves because they would cover up my arms," she says. When the show's stylists made suggestions, "I'd go, 'This dress is way too beautiful. If I add sleeves it will ruin it.' So I just got over it."

These days, "I'm really comfortable in my own skin," Jordin says with her signature wide smile. "I learned that I'm not ever going to be a size 2. I would look so weird as a size 2. Somebody would blow and I would fall right over. It just wouldn't be healthy."

And what of Roth? "Inside Edition" reports that the "obesity expert" is taking a lot heat and even death threats from fans of the newly crowned Idol for saying the singer should lose weight.

"When someone is overweight whether she be an 'American Idol' or not we know that her health has been compromised," Roth said. Nasty messages began being posted online after Roth went public saying sparks is overweight and unhealthy.

"Jordin Sparks signed herself up to be a plus-sized model. It's not going to be a surprise to her that she might be perceived as being slightly overweight," Roth told "Inside Edition."

And while Roth now says some of her comments were misconstrued, the controversy doesn't seem to be bothering Sparks a bit.

In case you missed the lovely and vivacious Jordin's appearance on "Ellen," you can watch video of her here, with DeGeneres:



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