The co-owner of the Brooklyn store at the center of Kelly Clarkson’s Mechanical Bird controversy has accused the singer of “reprehensible abuse of power” after her public complaints reportedly sparked a flood of online harassment against his small business.
“It’s a pop star, a mechanical bird, it’s surreal. When this thing first started, everyone wanted us to die,” Adam Rubin, co-owner of Art of Play in Brooklyn Heights, exclusively told Page Six on Tuesday, referring to the hundreds of threatening messages his staff have received since Clarkson dragged his store on social media.
“And as the truth has come out, people have realized that this is a condemnable abuse of power,” he added. “We need to rethink the place we give celebrities in our society.”
Rubin criticized Clarkson for using his platform to eliminate a small business.
“This is not how you can behave as a citizen in the world, like, if you’re so famous and powerful and you try to crush someone like a bug, then we should blame the troll for all the harm it causes. He lit the fuse,” he said.
A children’s book author called the last 72 hours “completely surreal” after receiving an onslaught of hate from Clarkson fans.
“It’s so intense — thousands of hateful phone calls, thousands of hateful text messages, Kelly Clarkson’s fans demanding that we apologize to her, and it’s such a blatant distortion of reality, that one can look at the situation and think we’re the ones who should be apologizing,” he said.
She also said that Clarkson’s fans have “come out of business”, tracking her and her staff on social media, spewing hate at her friends and harassing her neighbors.
Rubin assured us that every customer who walks through his shop’s doors is treated equally.
He said, “Whatever happened in the shop, even if there was a misunderstanding in a crowded shop – everyone who comes into the shop is treated like a normal person. That’s what makes him angry.”
Clarkson did not receive any special treatment because of her celebrity status, Rubin said.
“They were treated like everyone else who came in, whether they were in sweatpants or they were 9 years old, or they were a celebrity we didn’t recognize,” he said, adding that no one in his store recognized him. “They are all treated the same.”
He criticized anyone demanding that the store apologize to the “Breakaway” artist.
“I mean, he threw a Molotov cocktail into our store, and while the store is on fire, they’re saying we should apologize to him?” He said. “This is asymmetric social warfare.”
Rubin believes that Clarkson was aware of the impact his words would have on his store and employees.
Rubin said, “We didn’t know this was going to happen, but Kelly Clarkson did it and she should be held accountable for her actions.” “I know there are a lot of people who have known Kelly Clarkson for 20 years – ‘know her’ in a parasocial relationship.
“They don’t really know this woman. So if you think she’s this down-to-earth, sweet, Midwestern girl, you have to ask yourself how do you explain the action she took this weekend? The whole f–king thing is ridiculous, man.”
Rubin noted that he received a measure of amusement from the many memes that appeared on the Internet about their feud.
“Listen, I think objectively, it’s hilarious. If it wasn’t happening to me, I would think it was pretty funny,” he said. “The memes have been fantastic.”
Rubin admitted that she “sympathized” with Clarkson, but found her actions hard to forgive.
“She knew what was going to happen,” he said. “She knew that the full pressure of her millions and millions of fans around the world was going to come to the service of their queen and arm themselves and humiliate themselves on behalf of a millionaire they had never met.”
As to whether the bird was actually for sale, Rubin explained that the automaton in the store was similar to “a showroom” model and that if Clarkson wanted to make a sale another bird would have to be specially ordered.
“He didn’t pull out his black card and try to buy stuff off the wall. He wasn’t told, no, he wasn’t asked to leave,” Rubin said. “He asked about the bird. It’s on the wall, and permanently attached. It was explained to him that these things are a complicated situation to make. They take years.”
Despite the explosive confrontation between the store owners and Clarkson, Rubin said he was welcome any time.
He said, “It’s not about Kelly Clarkson. It’s about the power that we grant celebrities, and how much we as a society are okay with that when they abuse it.” “They need to be held accountable. I’m not talking about Kelly Clarkson specifically. I’m saying, society sucks, and we need to look at ourselves in the mirror.”
The feud erupted this weekend when Clarkson pulled the Art of Play on Ax, and accused an employee of treating her like Julia Roberts’ character in “Pretty Woman” after allegedly assuming she couldn’t afford a $15,000 mechanical singing bird.
Clarkson alleged that the employee looked her up and down before offering to find her a cheaper alternative, leading her to call him an “idiot” who had lost a major sale.
However, the store retorted, saying that the bird named “Molly” was not for sale, and said that they offered to show her a different automaton for $2,000, an offer she did not accept.
Clarkson, 44, later accused the store of lying about the exchange, while owners said they had tried to contact her in hopes of making improvements.
A source exclusively told Page Six Monday that Clarkson “would have been furious” at the exchange.
“You know something must have really bothered her because she’s not like that,” the source said. “She’s not someone who makes a big deal out of nothing. She’s a very nice, normal person who is incredibly famous.”
Page Six has contacted Clarkson for comment.