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And Finally Artist News
Louis Tomlinson tells reporter who didn’t mention his sexuality: “I am in fact straight”
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 12 November 2014
One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson traded angry tweets with Independent journalist Jenn Selby earlier this week, after the newspaper published a report on a t-shirt the singer wore recently.
On Sunday, the Independent published an article headlined, “Louis Tomlinson supports gay Apple CEO Tim Cook – days after Harry Styles’ comments on gender and sexuality”. In it, Selby noted that Tomlinson had worn a t-shirt bearing Apple’s original, rainbow-coloured logo to the ‘X-Factor’ studio.
This, she went on, was clearly tacit support of Apple CEO Tim Cook, following the publication of an article in Businessweek where he declared that he was “proud to be gay”. And that the t-shirt wearing came after Harry Styles made an offhand comment in an interview that everyone has decided was him coming out as bi-sexual only proved that fact further.
Tomlinson, taking issue with the article, tweeted to Selby: “The fact that you work for such a ‘credible’ paper and you would talk such rubbish is laughable. I am in fact straight. Google ‘original apple logo’ and you will see the one printed on my shirt that you reported on. Trying to look for a promotion?”
Now, no one ever mentioned Tomlinson’s sexuality here, and no one ever got a promotion for guessing about what a t-shirt might mean, but apart from that… well, that was good use of grammar for a popstar, wasn’t it? He then added in a tweet visible to all of his followers “fucking ridiculous I even have to tweet that shit!” Though if you look at his timeline now, without his reply tweets showing, it sort of seems like he’s complaining about having to promote One Direction’s new album.
Anyway, Jenn Selby responded thus: “Hi @Louis_Tomlinson thank you for your tweet. I’m sorry you found our article in any way insulting. At no point did we insinuate anything about your sexuality or mention your relationship, and nor would we. We were merely speculating as to whether you’d shown your support to a brave man facing some persecution for his decision to come out in public recently”.
It has to be said that “speculation” did sort of come across as “fact” in print, but whatever. She added: “I’d like to remind my readers That being called ‘gay’ should never be insulting and that standing up for LGBT rights is an admirable thing to do. I’d also like to remind Directioners that calling a woman a ‘bitch’ is never OK – and neither are death threats. And to thank those Rainbow Directioners who have tweeted it for their support. It is much appreciated”.
I would explain to you now what the ‘Rainbow Directioners’ are, but we all know 1D peaked eleven weeks ago and all my efforts have now been diverted to understanding factions and cliques within the 5 Seconds of Summer fanbase. But to conclude: Louis Tomlinson off of One Direction is definitely NOT gay, even if no one – not even the Independent – says he is.
