Rebecca Black’s GMA Bullying: Best Friday Ever

Rebecca Black’s GMA Bullying: Best Friday Ever

Last week Rebecca Black was just a kid with a big dream, a bigger ego and a supportive mom. This week she’s a bonafide web-celeb whose Youtube video’s collected 16 million hits and surpassed Charlie Sheen in #winningness. Her single, Friday, which was produced by vanity record label Ark Music Factory and paid for by her mother has broken the iTunes 100 and currently sits at No. 69. **Update: As of 3/19 Friday is No. 19 on the iTunes chart.

But while her video was amassing views, she was taking heat all week from thousands of detractors who complained that the catchy, if not Grammy-worthy, track was breaking their ear drums. Comedian Tosh.0 got into the ridicule game and soon enough, as seems de rigeur on the Web these days, things got mean. Some particularly rabid commenters suggested she “cut herself” or “get an eating disorder.”

But while Black’s infamy was ramping up all week, it took a spike this morning when what had been limited to cyber bullying turned into a real life confrontation for the teen. But this time on national television. By a grown woman.

After a smug intro, Good Morning America’s Andrea Canning embodied a real life mean girl when she stared down the bright eyed eighth grader. The reporter smirked as she repeated the criticisms of Black’s online detractors: “This is the worst song I have ever heard in my life, even deaf people are complaining.” “I hate her voice, it’s going to be stuck in my head for life.”

“Do you think you’re a good singer?” Canning icily asks after inviting Black to perform the national anthem on command (it was surprisingly good and made me question why Friday was so outrageously autotuned in the first place). “I’m not the worst singer,” she replied, unshaken by the mocking tone of her interviewer. “I think I have talent on some level.”

Talent or not (judge for yourself), it’s this reporter’s opinion that it’s Canning, not Black, who should be ashamed of her actions—and the videos circling online today. Black is a little girl whose mother paid for her to make a music video, like so many moms pay for their daughters to have glamour shots taken at the local mall (or at least they used to—am I old? Maybe) and wound up making headlines and what Rolling Stone says to be cold hard cash on the iTunes charts.

Canning, on the other hand, is a 38-year-old woman who bullied an eighth grader on national TV.

What do you think? Is Canning a mean girl or does she just play one on TV?