Fumble: Abdul’s changing tune

She loves being on American Idol. She hates being on American Idol. She loves Simon Cowell like a brother. Simon Cowell is out to destroy her career. Mixed messages can be extremely damaging to a communicator’s credibility. In Paula Abdul’s case, the singer, dancer and Idol judge has committed several other communications sins, including loopy interviews and an ill-conceived reality TV show about her life that only cemented her reputation for instability. In any event, this week ABC’s The View and its host Barbara Walters replayed recent video of an interviewed the show did on air with Abdul, asking about the stalker who killed herself in her car outside Abdul’s house and her future on American Idol, which begins anew in January. Abdul oozed serenity and spread the love around. Walters replayed the tape because the previous evening she’d had Abdul on her Sirius Satellite radio show dropping some pretty big bombs on the TV show that saved her career, and on Cowell. Abdul claimed producers on Idol allowed stalker Paula Goodspeed to audition three times, aware as they were that she’d stalked the star for 17 years. “She came to the audition. I said, ‘This girl is a stalker of mine. Please do not let her in.’ I was shaking. The producers thought, for entertainment value, it would be funny. Fun for them to cause me stress. It would make good television,” Abdul told Walters on radio. She went on to say that Fox TV had filmed her home, giving away the address, despite the fact that they knew the stalker had threatened her with bodily harm. For good measure, she added that Cowell seemed determined to force her off the show. If she’s so upset, Walters asked, why stay? “Because I’m under contract.” Sweetness and light one day, darkness and foreboding the next, undermines anything Abdul says on the matter.