If the guitarist was being offensive to her audience, then it was completely appropriate to fire him in front of the audience members who were offended. She is a good singer, and attracts a middle class audience, and if he was being inappropriate, intentionally, then he got what he deserved. 

Not knowing what he did, it’s very hard to judge. As a rule, though, it’s best to keep firings private, to spare even the idiots of the world some humiliation, but sometimes, people cross a line, and they deserve the public shaming, and I think if it was warranted, she handled it very well.

She didn’t yell at him, and she didn’t call him names, she just sang him off the stage, and made it clear he wouldn’t be back. I thought it was pretty good, if warranted.

This is one of the reasons so many musicians like to hire multi-instrumentalists. You can do this to a guitar player or even a keyboard player and the show can still float without them. But let’s say if the drummer or bass player did whatever he did that pissed her off so bad. She couldn’t have thrown that tantrum and and fired them on stage unless someone else could get off their instrument and pick up the slack. Being that you are not going to do with either of those two pieces. Or if you’re willing to sacrifice tonality, depth, feel, and clarity and have the keyboardist sacrifice some parts of their chord structures to play a bass patch if it’s the bass player that you must can on stage. 

What? Just because Kelly was a woman, she could go bitchy and fire anyone? The only one flipping the bird is you toward men! “..bad-a$$…putting her foot down…”, what nonsense…you want to pretend a woman could do no wrong? Women like you will never get why men don’t respect women. You bitch and moan and completely think you are superior as a gender even when history and on day to day basis men are making history and contributing to this world while women like you get all excited when a diva would go against any male. Go back to reading your “Star” magazine.

1) Kelly has stated many times that her band is like family to her before and after this incident. Kelly must have felt that whatever he did, flipping the bird or something else, was not something that she wanted her band and ultimately herself to portray.

2) Kelly knows where her fame really comes from, her fans. She has never forgotten that and has always been true to herself and through the ups and downs her fans have stuck by her side. They love her realism i guess you could call it, she doesn’t pretend to be something she’s not and like it or not this is Kelly’s band and her show. This is difficult for any performer because not only do they have to take responsibility for themselves they also have to be responsible for everyone in their band and on their crew. And anything that happens on stage can and will be seen as her views or beliefs if not kept in check.

3) Dwayne may have got caught up in the moment, and this happens to all of us but unfortunately this doesn’t excuse him from accepting the consequences. We don’t know why he did what he did and if he did just flip off the audience, he probably didn’t think it was that big of a deal, like a lot of other people out there. I mean there have been way worse things going on on stage than that in other bands. But even if for one second he forgot that this wasn’t a band that has the liberty to act that way, and this isn’t even an issue of children being present, this has everything to do with Kelly’s beliefs and what she feels is the right way to treat her fans.

4) Kelly was left with no choice, if she didn’t fire him if she didn’t address the problem right at that moment then her fans were going to be free to make assumptions that she condones that behavior.

It just comes down to the fact that him flipping the bird, if that is what happened, is the equivalent of Kelly herself telling the audience to F**K off. The band is an extension of herself when upstage and doing anything to her fans, whom she obviously loves, did and should guarantee removal of the problem including a band member.

Firing someone on stage and whipping up the crowd to get into it?

Not seeing the bad ass. Why would I admire it?

Her right? Sure. Was he a jerk? We don’t know. It’s interesting the people saying “well, she did this to him –therefore he must have deserved it.”

I’ve managed people and had a few who were enraging and needed to *go*, yesterday. It’s still a mark of decency to do it in private.

She’s the boss. She has the money, the contract and the fans. What was tough or admirable about her behavior? I would think a man was a total d*ck if he did this to a woman on stage. Don’t think because it’s a woman firing a guy it makes her hardcore or something. There’s plenty of women executives, as there are guys, who revel in bringing down the hammer on people.

IDK, it’s maybe just me. As has been pointed out, it was 2005, she was young. Interesting discussion about what behavior people admire in entertainers.

This was in 2005? Not like we’ve heard stories of Kelly being an evil tyrant since then.

Are you kidding me? All you ever hear about her is that she’s a diva, most recently at the opening of the AI attraction at Universal Studios when they brought all the winners together.

Whatever, she’s been eclipsed anyway. Carrie passed her. Daughtry probably will in time. It’s not 2005 anymore.

“I’m strong but I break
I’m stubborn and I make plenty of mistakes.
I’m confusing as hell, I’m north and south
And I’ll probably never have it all figured out
But what I know is I wasn’t meant to walk this world”

She’s only staying true to her music, and I respect that.