Generation 90210 Remembers: Fergie on Kids Inc.

Many generation 90210-ers remember Kids Inc., a show about an afterschool night club of sorts where a motley crew of singers and dancers performed 80s hits. She doesn't know about you, but as soon as that final bell of the day rang in fourth grade, Miss Ramona skipped right on down to the local discotheque. While The Mickey Mouse Club had Justin, Christina, Britney, and, umm, Ryan Gosling, Kids Inc. had Mario Lopez, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and Stacey Ferguson who grew up to be the eponymously-named Fergie. Speaking of JL Hewitt, she recently appeared on a talk show offering a new strategy for getting over a break-up - vajazzling, that is, covering one's vagina with multi-colored crystals to inspire a sense of female empowerment

In her recent incarnation as Fergie, Fergie-Ferg, the Duchess, or Fergilicious, respectively, Ms. Ferguson has come under fire for her onstage urination problems and a poorly done brow lift. But on Kids Inc. she was the girl everyone wanted to be, with blonde curls and a voice made for singing Lionel Richie songs to handicapped clowns.Now, for some, clowns evoke joy and laughter. For Miss Ramona, they evoke pedophiles. This general feeling is not mitigated by the vision of young Stacey singing a love ballad to a male clown as he twirls a broom (a phallic symbol meant as a symbol of defiance of dominant discourses which cast the disabled as infantilized and emasculated?) mournfully in the background before giving her a bouquet of flowers as they sit close together on a bench. When people get nasty with Fergie or wonder about her meth problem, cut the broad some slack and remember that as a child she was forced to sing " Say you, say me/Say it for always/That's the way it should be" to a grown man in a wig and make-up because that is some fucked-up stuff.

A PS - upon rewatching the clip, Miss Ramona noticed that she missed the creepiest part of the song - "People in the park/Playing games in the dark/And what they played was a masquerade/And from behind the walls of doubt, a voice was crying out" Good Lord. It sounds like bunch of kinky sex freaks getting ready to sacrifice a child in some sort Eyes Wide Shut scenario. Can we get some "Dancing on the Ceiling" up in this piece?