Adam Lambert: The "CBS Early Show" Interview Is Not An Irony Free Zone

How can you stay mad at that smile?

After his sexy American Music Awards performance, Adam Lambert had his scheduled appearance on ABC's Good Morning America canceled. But he still got up early, to do the competing CBS Early Show. And the whole thing may have been the savviest move yet from the performer.

While he admitted the live performance got a bit more sexual than what he had rehearsed, he was quick to point out that it was nearly 11pm and "family hour" was over at 10pm, and kids should be in bed. He also takes a controversial (irony, people) stance that if parents were offended, maybe they should Tivo late night programs before allowing their children to watch them. Active parenting? Radical concept.

The thing that caught me was that in the intro to the interview, CBS ran a pretaped piece, with sound bites from a conservative who was outraged and an industry insider that said it was par for the course. And in that intro, they showed this picture from the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards:

Madonna kisses Britney on morning television.

But four minutes later in the interview, they showed Adam's performance from the American Music Awards:

Men kissing gets the pixelator action the gay guys on The Amazing Race got.

This seems to support Adam's statement in the interview that the outrage and censorship is about him being a gay male, and a double standard does exist. The interviewer seems to be trying to get him to admit it was the venue, network television but thankfully, Adam sticks to his guns. Here's the interview (web version tellingly runs without the intro bit):

The best news? Adam's performance was great, he sounded like Idol-Adam. He sang "Whataya Want from Me" and "Music Again", had a lot of fun, and proved he's still got that great voice.

Updated:CBS made "Music Again" available.

So what do you guys think? Did CBS just prove Adam's point about there being a double standard for gay men than women?

UPDATE: Our colleagues over at NewNowNext.com have details of Lambert's visit to Logo studios, where he chats up NewNowNext Pop Lab about the AMA's, GMA, and other gay stuff. Check it out HERE.

Glambert gets wired to chat up NewNowNext PopLab.

Update: The Los Angeles Times finally got a statement from CBS concerning the blurring of Adam's kiss versus Madonna's kiss:

A CBS representative responded: "We gave this some real thought.  The Madonna image is very familiar and has appeared countless times, including many times on morning television. The Adam Lambert image is a subject of great current controversy, has not been nearly as widely disseminated and, for all we know, may still lead to legal consequences.