If you were watching the Louisville, Ky., auditions on American Idol last week, you may remember Mark Mudd. You know the guy – he said he was related to Samuel Mudd, the doctor who set the broken leg of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
Well, you may also remember his parting words to the Idol judges after they’d rejected him for the show: “Y’all take care and be careful.”
“That was a threat,” Simon Cowell said. Paula Abdul concurred, saying, “That was a threat. You don’t say that to people: ‘be careful.’ That’s not a normal thing to say.”
Compounded to the perceived threat was the fact that when Mudd entered the room, Cowell asked him if he had a gun. Mudd said he didn’t but that he was nervous.
On Idol’s website, producers issued the following statement:
“We apologize to any viewers who were offended by the misinterpretation of the contestant’s comment to ‘be careful’ upon completion of his audition in Louisville, Ky. Our visits to audition cities are relatively brief and sometimes regional greetings and salutations are lost in translation.
“We had not heard that phrase from any other contestants during the day, so it took everyone by surprise. We now know better and look forward to visiting Louisville again someday.”