NBC’s “The Voice” is straining over a scandal involving Blake Shelton’s alleged racist, homophobic and just-plain-creepy tweets.
After social-media mavens managed to dig up the offending messages — which were posted between 2009 and 2011, before Shelton became a household name — we’re told that publicists for the NBC talent show called at least one major media outlet and threatened to cut off access to the show’s stars, and tapings, if it continued to cover the kerfuffle.
Sure enough, while links to stories about the fan backlash and his family’s reaction can still be found on a certain entertainment news site, by Tuesday they led to blank pages.
The Twitter uproar began Saturday when Shelton’s tweets — which went under the radar when they were posted, since Shelton had yet to join hit “The Voice” and was still a niche, country musician — were re-posted online.
In the cache of messages were offensive remarks including, “wish the [bleep]head in the next room would either shut up or learn some English so I would at least know what he’s planning to bomb,” and, “standing in line at a coffee shop in LA talking with the man in front of me. He orders a skinny caramel latte. I couldn’t tell he was gay!!!”
In another, Shelton said he was “flying home to sleep with two young blonde and black haired bitches,” and bizarrely, when referring to then-16-year-old actress Dakota Fanning, he wrote “Soo . . . I just figured out a great excuse for my sick fantasy about Dakota Fanning. I thought she was Amanda Seyfried.”
Said a Page Six source, “His people think this will blow over, but as the scandal unfolded reps for ‘The Voice’ called at least one site and asked them not to run [coverage] in exchange for continued access to the show,” which might include perks like interview opportunities with stars Christina Aguilera and Adam Levine, as well as tickets to tapings.
Reps for “The Voice” didn’t get back to us, and a rep for Shelton declined to comment.
When old tweets come back to haunt celebs: