But when people think of Barack Obama’s inauguration, one thing will rise above all others. No, not the thrill of seeing America’s first black president appointed into office. And not the huge number of well-wishers who flocked to Washington to see the ceremony. We’re talking, obviously, about Aretha Franklin’s stupid hat.

Seriously. Aretha Franklin’s stupid hat has become the latest must-have item. Truly, Obama’s inauguration has paved the way for a bright future where anyone can look like a monumental bellend.

Now we’re no fashion experts, but we know the basic rules. Blue and green must never be seen, vertical stripes make you look thinner and massively obese women should all wear stupid hats with great big bloody enormous bows on them to draw attention away from their great big bellies.

It certainly worked for Aretha Franklin at Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony this week. Aretha Franklin – the queen of soul, the first black woman to appear on the cover of Time, the woman who soundtracked the civil rights movement, the greatest living inspiration to all competitive eaters around the world – was, it appears, invited to perform at Barack Obama’s inauguration to see if she could break the hotly-contested world record for shouting the word ‘ring’ as many times as possible to the tune of God Save The Queen.

But Aretha Franklin had other ideas. Sure, she was going to sing for the new president, but only if she could do it do it in a stupid hat. After all, Aretha Franklin is a legend. She won’t take any shit from Beyonce, so she certainly won’t take any shit from people who know the difference between a good hat and a spectacularly awful hat.

And, let’s be honest, it was a spectacularly awful hat. Logic dictates that nobody should ever wear a hat if the bow on the hat is actually larger than the wearer’s own head, not unless they want to look like the first prize in a Win A Vastly Overweight Tyler Perry Lookalike tombola.

However, since the inauguration something weird has been happening. People have actually decided that they liked Aretha Franklin’s stupid hat. They like Aretha Franklin’s stupid hat enough to flood its milliner Luke Song with orders for replicas. AP reports:

Song said he wasn’t prepared for the hundreds of calls requesting the hat with a Swarovski rhinestone-bordered bow. “We even have a lot of men calling to get it for their wives, mothers and grandmothers,” Song said… The design for Franklin’s hat came from two different hats at the store. “She walked through the shop and said ‘I want that bow (put) on that hat,’” he said.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is called style. Aretha Franklin always gets what Aretha Franklin wants. If she wants an inordinately big bow put on an otherwise normal hat, she gets it. If she wants to wear a coat made exclusively out of dead things, she gets it. And if Aretha Franklin wants to have an entire truckload of mashed-up food poured straight into her mouth through a funnel every day for her tea, then she gets that as well.

We’re not saying that Aretha Franklin does that, by the way. Just that she looks like she does. It’s a subtle difference.

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That is, unless a cosmetics company decide to make you white. Then you kind of fall down on part of that description.

It would seem that the make-up behemoths at L’Oreal may just be the types to force this kind of change on the young diva, with claims being made that Beyonce’s skin tone has been lightened for a magazine ad. The company dispute these allegations.

You know – ‘whitening’ things up to make them more palatable to the masses. They did it with every other element of black culture – the music, the clothing, the lingo – why not start trying to make black celebrities white too?

Okay, so maybe we’re going a bit overboard with it – but it’s Friday, and hecklerspray has some drinkin’ to get done. It’s maybe not as bad as that.

No, it doesn’t appear to be L’Oreal’s version of ‘ethnic cleansing’, more the result of a dodgy photo editing job.

The advert in question shows Beyonce after she’s done one of those hair dying things that girls seem to like so much – 100 per cent grey cover and all that. When the advert image of Bouncy is placed next to any other picture of her, it’s clear to see there’s something not quite right

She looks a bit Michael Jacksoned, frankly, with lighter skin and fairer hair. And it’s a bit frightening.

The claims – which began on everyone’s favourite website TMZ – were quick to be refuted by L’Oreal Paris. They said:

“We highly value our relationship with Ms. Knowles. It is categorically untrue that L’Oreal Paris altered Ms. Knowles’ features or skin tone in the campaign for Feria hair color.”

Which is all well and good, and it’s not like us to be disbelieving of a multi-national corporation like this, but… well – just look at the pictures. While it may well be true that the company had no idea they had ‘whitened’ Beyonce, it cannot be denied that she looks a lot more like a white chick than she normally does.

Which conjures up awful, awful, awful imagery of a possible Wayans Brothers sequel. Something surely not out of the question with the re-makery on show in Hollywood today.

Now when Aretha Franklin thinks of PETA, she has a different experience all together. 'Tax saviors' may be the term that first comes to her mind. That's because they've just promised to pay all her back house taxes on one condition… she must kill her only child! With a cheese grater! And meat spices!

That's not true, but wouldn't it be so dramatic? If it was true it probably would have been in the headline.

Think about it.

Aretha Franklin has recently allotted some of her scheduled time away from despising Beyonce, and focused it more on not paying her taxes. Such a lack of governmental interaction is a perk of being a celebrity – just ask that guy from Survivor. Or Marc Anthony. Or Wesley Snipes. Ask them all, actually.

Well Aretha Franklin's big fat fancy house is about to be lost forever because of her tax mishaps. We're sure PETA would rather see Franklin's wardrobe get confiscated by the man, but it won't be. No – it's her house hanging in the balance.

Luckily for Franklin though, PETA is an organisation that can see past her wardrobe sins. They've offered to pay off her back taxes – if Franklin trashes all her furs. Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's evil mastermind, wrote a letter to the hefty singer. Part of which said:

"We would like to help you out by paying the approximate $19,000 in back taxes that you owe – if you'll agree to save animals from hideous suffering and death by promising never to wear fur again and donating your old furs to PETA…Our offer is a win-win situation: You get to keep your home, and animals get to keep their lives. We are rooting for you to please give animals the R-E-S-P-E-C-T that they deserve by giving up fur."

We're pretty sure PETA's trying so desperately to help Franklin because in her old age she looks like a beluga, and if those things aren't endangered they should be. You hear that congress? Put belugas on that one special list you guys always add on to. They're such sweet animals! Do it now!

So demands hecklerspray!

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Aretha Franklin's PETA Payout – Monsters & Critics

And it gets worse, because animal rights warriors PETA have now declared Aretha Franklin to be the worst dressed celebrity of the year, thanks to all the fur she wears.

It's a fair title too, because Aretha Franklin is easily crueler to animals than any other celebrity. Look at it this way – if Eva Longoria wears a fur coat then maybe 40 animals died to make it. But when Aretha Franklin wants a fur coat, hunters have to kill and skin every single furry animal on the face of the planet – and shave off their own pubes – just to almost stretch over half of one of her gigantic wobbly upper arms.

More than anyone, Aretha Franklin should know about animal rights. That's not because her important role in the civil rights movement imbued her with a sense of love for all living creatures, but because any time she gets too close to the Japanese coastline people try to harpoon her.

It looks like the whole world's got it in for Aretha Franklin at the moment. For instance, the Grammys managed to deeply offend Aretha by calling Tina Turner by a made-up title that some people occasionally use when referring to her. And, to make it worse, Aretha's currently at number one on Beyonce's Dad's shit-list.

And now constantly-angry animal rights group PETA has got the hump with Aretha Franklin, too, for the amount of fur she wears. Silly PETA, doesn't it know that Aretha Franklin needs to wear fur because her surface area is so vast that bits of her snap off if they're not covered up properly? The Associated Press reports:

PETA thinks Aretha Franklin is no queen of soul when it comes to wearing fur. Franklin was crowned this year's worst-dressed celebrity by the animal rights organization. Her crime: wearing "yet another vulgar fur" at the Grammy Awards. "… you looked as if you were going to perform `I Am the Walrus' by the Beatles," People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said Wednesday of Franklin's appearance. "You might be a queen, but you don't know jack about compassion. How 'bout some R-E-S-P-E-C-T for animals?" PETA added.

Other names on PETA's worst-dressed list include Eva Longoria, Kate Moss, Lindsay Lohan, Kylie Minogue and Marilyn Manson, for owning some leather trousers. Human corpses? That's just dandy, but leather trousers? What an evil bastard.

Aretha Franklin joins the likes of Nicole Richie and The Olsen Twins as celebrities that PETA doesn't like, but the organisation has another thing coming if it thinks that Aretha is just going to roll over and stop wearing fur like everyone else. That's partly because Aretha Franklin physically can't roll over any more without the aid of two cranes, a forklift truck and a specially-trained crew, and partly because Aretha Franklin is a formidable opponent to have.

Honestly, look at how shitty she got when someone didn't call her 'the queen'. And PETA's got the nerve to say she doesn't dress well? If we worked for PETA we'd be terrified that Aretha Franklin would punch our offices to smithereens with her bare club-like fists any time now.

Read more:

Aretha Makes PETA's 'Worst-Dressed' List – Associated Press 

Yes, the Grammys are dull, overlong and self-congratulatory, but if the Grammys didn't exist, then Aretha Franklin's demented tantrum over Beyonce calling Tina Turner 'the queen' instead of her wouldn't exist either. And that's just too priceless to live without.

Especially now that Beyonce's dad has gotten in on the act, too – Matthew Knowles has called Aretha Franklin "childish and unprofessional" for her outburst. We're expecting Aretha's "That's childish, unprofessional and super-super morbidly obese to you," retort to come any second now.

When it was announced that Beyonce was to duet with Tina Turner at this year's Grammys, at best you probably expected an under-rehearsed medley of power ballads performed by an elderly out-of-breath woman and a woman hell-bent on swamping everything with all sorts of needless "woooahoahwhooah"ery.

But ha! That's not what you got at all. In fact, what Beyonce and Tina Turner gave us on Sunday night was an under-rehearsed medley of power ballads performed by an elderly out-of-breath woman and a woman hell-bent on swamping everything with all sorts of needless "woooahoahwhooah"ery containing an introduction that made Aretha Franklin flip her shit.

In case you needed reminding, Beyonce introduced Tina Turner as 'the queen.' And this managed to rile Aretha Franklin senseless because she's supposed to be the queen, and Tina Turner can't be the queen as well otherwise there'll be two queens and people will get confused. What if Tina Turner and Aretha Franklin both went to the same party and there was a snack trolley labelled 'for the queen'? Would they have to share? We get the feeling that Aretha Franklin would rather take her own life than share any snacks. Mainly, we think this whole brouhaha is snack-based.

Anyway, Aretha Franklin was so upset by all this that she made a public statement about it. And now it's the turn of Beyonce's father Matthew Knowles to make a stand, and he seems as bewildered about all this as the rest of us:

"Something this ridiculous – it's childish, it's unprofessional. And it's a sad day when egos get bruised because somebody used the word king, queen, prince or princess."

And now Matthew Knowles has followed it up in an interview with CelebTV making his views even clearer:

"I am not taking something this ridiculous to Beyonce. Beyonce referred to Tina Turner as a 'queen.' Not queen of gospel, queen of soul, queen of blues, Queen of England. I consider my wife a queen and sometimes call her that. Does Aretha have a problem with that?"

In fact, Aretha doesn't have a problem. She eats problems for breakfast. She eats a lot of things for breakfast, though, so maybe we shouldn't we shouldn't judge that too harshly on that. 

So now just about the only person not to have spoken out about this kerfuffle is Tina Turner. There could be any number of reasons for this – perhaps she's decided to rise above it, perhaps she's continuing her pattern of not responding to anything that happens to her, or perhaps she's still out of breath from her Grammys performance – but we're not so sure.

We think that Tina Turner is quietly preparing for battle. you see, if Tina Turner is now queen, then it makes sense for Aretha Franklin to upgrade to Super-Queen. And if that happens, Tina will need to think fast and upgrade too, to Ultra Mega Super-Queen. And so it will continue, until the fateful day when Mega Super Hyper Condor GalactaQueen Aretha Franklin and Ultra Ultra Thundersaurus Omegamax Queen Tina Turner wrestle each other in the middle of New York, knocking down buildings and punching heads off statues and whatnot.

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Beyonce's Dad Weighs in on 'Queen' Flap – Associated Press 

And that's got Aretha Franklin thoroughly narked. You see, Beyonce introduced Tina Turner at the Grammys by calling her "the queen." And Aretha Franklin is under the impression that she's actually the queen.

The queen of what, we don't know. Although judging by her performance at the Grammys, our first guess would be that Aretha Franklin is the queen of competition-standard sausage-gobbling.

Although the rightful focus of the Grammys on Sunday was the way that Amy Winehouse managed to sing two songs without falling over, throwing up, smoking any hard drugs or hacking away at any of her bodyparts with a razorblade, other people found different things to concentrate on.

And, although the Grammys duet between Beyonce and Tina Turner wasn't especially pleasant, that's what Aretha Franklin has focused her mind on, anyway. Luckily Aretha Franklin isn't too concerned with the performance itself, or the way that Tina Turner's borderline-obscene silver corset pulled her 68-year-old torso in so tight that she made a noise like a choking baby rather than singing, but the way she was introduced.

You see, Beyonce's spoken-word introduction of Tina Turner mainly involved listing other female singers and saying that none of them are as good as Tina Turner, because Tina Turner is "the queen." And since Aretha Franklin thought that actually she was the queen, she's started getting shitty about it to anyone who'll listen. According to The Associated Press:

When Aretha Franklin is unhappy, she does not mince words. On Tuesday, the longtime Queen of Soul slammed Beyonce Knowles' intro to Tina Turner at Sunday's Grammy Awards, in which Knowles called Turner, not Franklin, "the queen." "I am not sure of whose toes I may have stepped on or whose ego I may have bruised between the Grammy writers and Beyonce," Franklin said in a statement issued by her publicist. "However, I dismissed it as a cheap shot for controversy."

If it was a cheap shot for controversy, then might we suggest that it isn't actually a particularly good one, since the only person to show even a flicker of anything approaching outrage is Aretha Franklin herself. Everyone else was probably wondering how long it took for Aretha to grow her upper arms to get to the size of a fat man's thighs.

Perhaps the organisers of the Grammys will pay attention to Aretha Franklin's tantrum, though, and in the future only refer to Tina Turner as a duchess or low-ranking marchioness or something. And maybe Aretha Franklin should think of copyrighting this queen thing – we hear several monarch states, a rock group, a scallop and a chess piece are already encroaching on her territory.

But, you know, maybe 'queen' isn't a big enough word to describe Aretha Franklin. Maybe 'planet' or 'galaxy' would be better – after all, we're pretty sure that Aretha Franklin does exert her own gravitational pull now.

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Franklin Slams Beyonce Grammy Intro – Associated Press