Kevin Federline needs to keep the Britney Spears name out of his mouth and get a real job

Last November, Britney Spears scored a historic victory when Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny picked it up. Termination of her mandate. after, after Years of work from Spears herselfAnd the Demonstrations From her most loyal fan, it’s shocking Documentary from The The New York TimesAnd finally, the singer Heartbreaking testimony In court, it seemed that Spears had finally gained her freedom.

When Spears exited her state, the public and the media responded with a torrent of panic. Documentary after documentary revealed how constant professional pressure, combined with a tabloid culture devoid of empathy, gradually but methodically broke the singer’s soul. Viewers saw Spears’ 2008 meltdown in a new light — not as a personal failure to be cruelly ridiculed, as it was at the time, but as a cry for help from a human being who had been exploited for most of his life for our entertainment.

However, less than a year later, that old, familiar cruelty already crept into Spears’ speech. Consider, for example, the conversation that erupted in the wake of her ex-husband Kevin Federline’s “revealing” of her recently.

on Monday, ITV started teasing Her three-part interview with ex-Mr. Spears. Federline said he believed guardianship “saved” his ex – this despite Spears’ own claims that she was forced into years of “treatment” with practitioners she never chose (which is not therapy at all); That her medication was forcibly changed as a “punishment” for the cancellation Its Las Vegas dominance Residence; And that her supervisors would not allow her to remove the IUD until she could have a baby. (This latter claim constitutes reproductive coercionaccording to Planned Parenthood Federation of America president, Alexis McGill Johnson.)

However, Federline insisted: “Jimmy Spears came to me and was like, pretty much, I don’t know what to do, I want to help,” he told ITV. “I saw a guy who really cares about his family and really cares about his family and wants everything to be okay.” (It doesn’t matter that Jimmy Spears He allegedly lived off his daughter’s fortune for years Even before her will, which drained her finances not only to pay for her lawyer but also his.)

However, Federline’s most subtle decision was to discuss Spears’ relationship with their two sons, Sean and Jayden, both still high school teenagers. Federline noted that Spears’ Instagram posts — in which she sometimes appears nude, censored with emojis — embarrassed her sons.

“I apologize to them, to them, because I can’t imagine what it feels like to be a teenager, having to go to high school,” Federline said. “Who knows how many people ask about it or talk to them about it?…I try to explain to them a look maybe [it’s] Just another way she tries to express herself but it doesn’t detract from the fact that what you’re doing to them, it’s hard.”

Spears’ husband, Sam Asgari, responded to Federline’s comments with a statement that noted, “Even if there was a fact that her children were ashamed of their mother’s choices and positive body image, they wouldn’t be the first teens to be ashamed of their parents.”

Even if there was a truth in her children feeling ashamed of their mother’s choices and positive body image, they wouldn’t be the first teens to be ashamed of their parents.

Sam Asghari

Then came the more explosive comments: Federline mentioned that Sean and Jayden “don’t see [Spears] Now” and it hadn’t been in “months” since they skipped her wedding this summer. “There are a lot of things that were going on that they just didn’t feel comfortable with,” he said. “They made sure I knew what was going on… they started sending me videos And certain things were like them, look, I’m telling you this is happening.”

What exactly is “this” remains unclear.

in Statement is now expired Spears wrote on her Instagram Story, “So sad to hear that my ex has decided to discuss the relationship between me and my kids…As we all know, raising teenage boys is never easy for anyone. I care why depends on my Instagram.” It’s been a long time before Instagram. I gave them everything…just one word: Painful.” In a later post, Spears called out her sonshatedThey claimed that they did not want to spend time with her during their visits.

That was all Federline needed to double down. “I can’t just sit back and let my sons charge like that after what they’ve been through,” Federline said. (He seems to have forgotten that it was the interview he had with their children that prompted Spears to comment.) “The lies have to stop,” Federline said. “I hope our children grow up to be better than this.”

Thus, Federline shared quite a few supposedly annoying videos on Instagram.

It saddens me to hear that my ex has decided to discuss the relationship between me and my kids… As we all know, raising teenage boys is not at all easy for anyone.

Britney Spears

Videos are not displayed exactly and Tunisia Energy, but it’s far from damned. In perhaps the most striking scene, one of the singer’s sons appears to be complaining that she confiscated his phone indefinitely for entering an ice cream shop in Alaska. The moment immediately reminded me of the time right before Spears’ meltdown when an entire folktale erupted over photos of her walking into a public restroom barefoot. I played the story in The media already insisted on the narrative that SpearsOnce our favorite poverty-to-riches story, it is now the irreplaceable “white trash.”

Federline removed the videos. Spears’ attorney, Matthew Rosengart, issued a statement On behalf of his client.

“Britney has loyally supported her children and loves them very much,” the statement read, in part. “Whether he realizes it or not, Mr Federline has not only violated the privacy and dignity of the mother of his children, he has undermined his children, whose privacy he must protect.”

Rosengart added: “Putting his ITV interview aside, Mr. Federline’s ill-advised decision to release an old video of his 11 and 12-year-olds was very cruel. It was abhorrent. In addition to insulting himself and violating societal norms, he has now also created Several legal issues for himself including, but not limited to, involvement in cyber-harassment and cyberbullying laws, among others.”

But what’s really astonishing is how easily Federline can take us all back to 2009 — when policing mother Spears was one of the entertainment media’s main preoccupations.

Kevin Federline celebrates his birthday at the Crazy Horse III Gentlemen Club on March 24, 2018, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Brian Stevie/Getty Images

It’s hard to imagine the positive motivation Federline and his family could have in sharing these moments. If the concern is Sean and Jayden’s embarrassment, then surely posting these videos – even, Federline claims, with children’s consent – will only increase the family’s scrutiny and humiliate everyone. And if anxiety is Spears’ parenting skills… I mean, can anyone really believe that this is Will you help?

Interlocutor at ITV Daphne BarakMeanwhile, he said some Federline interviews will not be broadcast in full because they are “too painful”.

Barak said the ITV story, which appears to focus on Federline but includes other family members, is about “parenthood in the eye of the storm.”

“It’s a story about the father and the boys and how he managed to successfully confront them with all this drama that is still going on as you can see with Instagram. So, basically, it wasn’t Kevin vs. Britney, and it wasn’t about her, it was about his mom and the whole family wanting that “.

Somehow I think “The Whole Family” doesn’t include Spears – the only reason viewers know any of her subjects’ names in the first place. (No offense to Federline The rap career is short-lived.)

Meanwhile, Spears’ family and former relationships – most of whom she claimed were complicit in her subjugation – continue to find media platforms to tell her story before she had a chance to do so herself. Lest we forget her little sister, Jimmy Lin, I have already prepared a comprehensive diary. Even some documentaries supposedly defend the singer, like Netflix Britney vs SpearsTake their cues from sources like the attorney who helped remove Shawn and Jayden from Spears’ custody. In the absence of Spears’ voice, and especially considering everything we know about how the singer was silenced thus far, these choices seem more than scandalous; They are cruel and careless.

It also seems no coincidence that many of the criticisms surrounding Spears, from her public nudity to her alleged fitness as a mother, have been gender specific. Spears’ fight to maintain guardianship, then and still is today, is at the same time an issue of disabled rights and an astonishing display of misogyny. Just like the conservatives’ relentless battle against abortion and the historical forced sterilization of women of color, this IUD was an attempt to bypass a woman’s autonomy by controlling what she could do with her body.

Federline couldn’t have picked the best time to publicly insult Spears again. Even in the wake Terrifying unsealed documents from the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trialAnd the Dior signed a seven-figure deal with Depp in front of her Cologne, Sauvage. and Brian Warner, aka Marilyn Manson, sued by Evan Rachel Wood to slander in its wake Strong testimony about the alleged abuse.

These situations are not identical, but they do share one basic dynamic: Women who speak out about the alleged abuse still face retaliation. In Spears’ case, the pain has been exacerbated by history: This behavior from Federline and online critics is largely an accurate re-reading of the bullying the singer faced as a young mother under a blazing spotlight.

The endless gossip and armchair psychoanalysis surrounding Spears is clearly intended not to help a recovering pop idol become a “better” dad but to entertain a tough audience and enrich everyone in her orbit — anyone with a bit of gossip to circulate for a while. Another 15 minutes. the television. Just as Spears fans suggested a few years ago when Federline tried to push Spears’ child support payments to $60,000 a month (from the $20,000 he was already collecting), now seems like a good time for K-Fed to “.Get a real job. “

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