Falling To ‘Pieces’

Heather Havrilesky of Salon.com weighed in on the Ashlee Simpson ‘Saturday Night Live’ lip-synching scandal, pointing a lot of the blame on her father Joe. “No matter how much Ashlee comes under fire for being a fraud — as if her entire reality show weren’t focused on the blatant, unapologetic fabrication of pop celebrity — Ashlee herself is too young and naive to be held accountable for the countless errors in judgment that have been made in handling her career,” Havrilesky said. “While her father/manager Joe Simpson has been described by the New York Times as a tenacious entrepreneur, you have to question the wisdom of a man who, having transformed his eldest daughter, Jessica, from second-string pop star into reality TV guinea pig and pop cultural punchline, would set his sites on squeezing his more sensitive, emotional daughter into the same celebrity mold. No matter how many times we saw Ashlee stomping her feet and insisting on doing things her way on her show — which mostly boiled down to which shade of chestnut to dye her blonde hair — it was always clear that she was a helpless pawn in someone else’s intensely profitable game.”