Uh oh. Adam Lambert just became a target of the Claymates

Once I read this piece in the Inquisitr, I knew that all hell was about to break loose.

Adam Lambert has finally responded to the catty comments made by former fellow gay American Idol runner Clay Aiken.

“I don’t know Clay,” Lambert told Access Hollywood. “I’m glad he’s getting headlines now though, because he wasn’t before. If he wants to ride my coattails about it, good for him.”

More here.

Now I've blogged about Clay Aiken before, and have discovered that even now, years after American Idol, Aiken has a ton of devoted fans. Perhaps they're not showing up at the tops of the charts, but there is a lot of money to be made by legacy acts. (Why do you think that groups from the 1980s, 1970s, 1960s, and 1950s continue to tour decades later?)

I submit this to you - if a brief period in late July 2007, I wrote about a ton of topics, including Iraq, the 2008 presidential election, Somalia, the Balkans, other international hotspots, the murder of Daniel Pearl, the entertainment industry, the news industry (not that there's necessarily a difference between the two), reminiscent looks at 1950s culture, baseball and steroids, football and dog fighting, animal rights, badgers, and native American poverty and funding sources. But the item that really drew traffic to my mrontemp blog during that period was a brief mention of a Clay Aiken casino appearance in a travel post.

So, to meet the needs of my readers, I wrote an entire post about Aiken's then-forthcoming appearance at Pala Casino. I wrote this under my then-current Ontario Emperor pseudonym, which resulted in some slightly misdirected praise in the comments:

Congratulations! I think you will be the first Canadian reporter/blogger, that managed to write a whole page about Clay, without maligning him, or insulting him, or questioning his sexuality.

Every single Canadian writer has been extremely offensive, and I wouldn't have came here to read this, if I wasn't sitting here listening to a Clay Aiken cellcert, and didn't pay attention to the website addy.

Praise for "the Canadian reporter" was echoed in a subsequent comment by "sweetclay."

Ignore their confusion about my location - my "Ontario Emperor" pseudonym confused nearly everyone outside of southern California - but note the passion exhibited by these writers, true fans of Clay.

That's when I discovered the world of the Claymates. In fact, in that late July 2007 period, I joked that Clay Aiken could even resurrect John McCain's then-stalled campaign. Little did I know that McCain would be able to secure the Republican nomination without Aiken's assistance.

But that was 2007. This is 2009. And it appears that Adam Lambert is building up a following that is as devoted to him as the Claymates are devoted to Aiken. And USA Today has even printed a name for them - Glamberts. And listya has compared the two:

Glamberts is the new Claymates. maybe worse than Claymates

Sabrina Brody predicted what would happen next:

The Claymates and Glamberts could have been united, but no, it will be war from here, like a modern epic.

And it should be noted that Aiken has clarified his original statement.

I am sure that some were upset by my choice of words describing my opinion of a performance I heard from Adam Lambert. I hope no one actually believed that blood truly poured forth from my ears when I heard him. I obviously meant it as a colorful statement to imply that I did not enjoy what I heard.

Good that's cleared up.

Truthfully, what Aiken really meant to emphasize in his response was that it shouldn't matter to Lambert that one particular person (Aiken) disliked one particular performance ("Ring of Fire"). I'm sure that Aiken wouldn't be upset at all if all of the Claymates loved Lambert's "Ring of Fire" performance; it just wasn't Aiken's cup of tea.

It's very difficult to compare the Claymates and the Glamberts at this stage, primarily because Lambert's Idol run just finished. While most of the comments that I've seen have favored the new guy, I'm not quite sure what's going on in the members-only Claymate boards.