The person who wrote "Should 'Fatties' Get a Room? (Even on TV?)" insists that she is not "some size-ist jerk."
No, she's just "a discredit to other women—and I think she is a bitch and I want her arse here," said Sharon Osbourne, who along with her fellow cohosts on The Talk listened in awe as Julie Chen read some of the choicer phrases from Maura Kelly's MarieClaire.com blog post from Oct. 25 on the air.
Kelly quickly updated her item with an apology, but not before Mike & Molly creator Mark Roberts—who interpreted the post as an attack on his show—called the item "hateful" and said he was definitely "unfriending that woman on Facebook."
"The woman apologized at the end of it," Roberts told the Hollywood Reporter. "Clearly she realized she said some pretty hateful things. My initial reaction is she's talking about [Mike & Molly stars Billy Gardell and Melissa McCarthy] and I love them. I feel protective and angry about people being loose lipped. I guess hateful is only way to describe it."
In her mea culpa, Kelly—who initially wrote that she would be "grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other"—admitted to struggling with her own weight and body image over the years.
"I would really like to apologize for the insensitive things I've said in this post," read Kelly's addendum. "Believe it or not, I never wanted anyone to feel bullied or ashamed after reading this, and I sorely regret that it upset people so much. A lot of what I said was unnecessary. It wasn't productive, either."
Unless her plan was to make a few enemies in high places.
"I am now canceling my subscription to the magazine," Osbourne said this morning, "because apparently, this Kelly said it was on the advice of the editor of the magazine to do this piece, and I think it is absolutely [deplorable]. I am so close to tears."
(Another essay, titled "Yes, Fat People Exist: A Vote in Favor of More Diverse Bodies on TV" is currently posted on MarieClaire.com, which hails it as "the first of a series of counterpoint posts" to Kelly's piece.)
"If this woman was here, I tell you, she would get such a mouthful from me," Osbourne continued. "People like this are adding to the problem that we have today with our kids—boys and girls—about being anorexic, about having low self-esteem...I'm 30 pounds overweight right now, should I not be allowed to kiss my husband or my children, or walk across a room?"
Kelly pissed off the wrong mum.
And Mike & Molly is currently the most-watched new comedy of the season, averaging 12.3 million viewers a week.