The best way I can properly write a profile on Ashlee Simpson is to take the lead of Hunter S. Thompson, the father of “gonzo” journalism.

Thompson’s method was to stress the truth, while not worrying about who he offends in the process- be it nobody or everybody. Objectivity, he said, was not possible. Everyone has a bias about everything. The best way to approach each topic is to be honest.

Known more for his conversational style of writing than for his subjects, the late Thompson was a gifted sports writer, often contributing to Sports Illustrated.

Covering the Super Bowl for Rolling Stone in 1974 (Fear and Loathing at the Superbowl), he focussed on everything to do with the Super Bowl but the actual game.

The game was meaningless, almost becoming a cliche in itself, in that it was predictable. Thompson considered slightly editing his article about the game from the previous year.

“It had suddenly occurred to me that I had already written the lead for this year’s Super Bowl game,” he wrote in the article. “I wrote it last year in Los Angeles, and a quick rip through the fat manila folder of clips labelled ‘Football ‘73′ turned it up as if by magic. I jerked it out of the file, and retyped it on a fresh page slugged: ‘Super Bowl/Houston ‘74.’ The only change necessary was the substitution of ‘Minnesota Vikings’ for ‘Washington Redskins.’ Except for that, the lead seemed just as adequate for the game that would begin in about six hours as it was for the one I missed in Los Angeles in January of ‘73.”

His point: his Super Bowl article could have been written without even watching the game, just filling in the blanks once it was complete.

The same could have been done with my Ashlee Simpson profile. Before I even interviewed her, I could have written the article and left space for her quotes. But if you Google her name, you can find dozens of those types of articles. Each one will start the same way, by talking about how she was caught lip-syncing on Saturday Night Live. It will tell you that she confronted this on her latest album and wrote two songs about the experience. It will make mention of her sister, Jessica Simpson, and how she is no longer in her shadow anymore because she now has her own successful career. Each one could have been written before speaking to her. Hunter S. Thompson wouldn’t have taken that approach.

And most profiles are not honest enough. They are neither sympathetic nor cruel to Ashlee. If they were compassionate to her, the readers would be outraged! But entertainment reporters are too damn nice and don’t want to upset artists, managers or publicists. So they make sure not to offend anyone, even if it means dressing up the truth. Hunter S. Thompson wouldn’t have taken that approach either.

They are afraid to say these two things: Ashlee Simpson is the most hated artist in the music industry; but she is fuckin’ successful and is actually good at what she is - a brand.

There. I’ve managed to upset both her and you readers at the same time.

I am taking this approach with Ashlee for one simple reason: you know everything there is to know about Ashlee Simpson already. You don’t need more uninspired poppycock telling you she made a mistake on Saturday Night Live. There is, believe it or not, more to her than SNL.

The only way I can even attempt at creating an article that is in some minute way redolent of gonzo journalism is to be brutally honest. And while I would hate to offend Ashlee, because she was nothing but respectful with every question I threw at her, I can’t worry about being pleasing. However, being complementary, in the sense of both meanings, is the only way to be both fair and accurate.

Ashlee Simpson has become the poster child for everything that’s wrong with the music business - fairly or unfairly.

She has been accused of trying to capitalize off her sister’s fame, the willing victim of nepotism. She has been called every name in the book after the Saturday Night Live incident. She certainly didn’t earn any points when a video was passed around the internet which showed Simpson at a McDonald’s, early one morning, apparently drunk and demanding that the girl behind the counter kiss her feet.

That McDonald’s incident was actually one of the only things that excited me for the phone interview. Simpson had already been through a month of interviews where she was getting asked every possible question regarding the SNL debacle. There was nothing else new that I could get her to reveal. But the McDonald’s tape was fresh. She hadn’t commented on it yet, and I wanted to hear her side of the story.

But that plan was quickly shot down.

One of her handlers called before the interview, and before she’d patch me through to Simpson, who was in Reading, Pennsylvania, she had to go over the ground rules. Two things were off limits: her sister’s marriage and her McDonald’s incident.

I had no problem with the first restriction. Just the fact that her team went out of their way to make sure that the marriage wasn’t up for discussion gave me more information than anything Ashlee would have said. There was obviously something being unsaid, and that was revealed a couple weeks after, when Jessica and Nick separated. But I wasn’t upset because I had no intentions of asking about Jessica and Nick’s marriage. I could care less. It’s none of my business. I hate tabloid journalism; the very phrase is an oxymoron.

But the McDonald’s incident wasn’t tabloid journalism because it represented the extent to which technology has advanced. It became a pop culture phenomenon over night. Some guy with a camera captures Ashlee Simpson drunk, and the next day it’s on CNN. To me, that is the essence of technology. Why else isn’t it tabloid journalism? Because if you remove Simpson from the video and place in anyone else, it could still show up on the news; local perhaps, but it could be shown in some form. The story wouldn’t be about someone who is drunk at a McDonald’s, but could be used as proof of some angle: how minimum-wage employees are treated, for example.

But come on, everyone saw that tape so I would not be doing my job if I did not ask about it.

“That’s the type of question we’d ask,” a Toronto Sun reporter told me a few days later. Ok, maybe it is quasi-tabloidish.

I respected their wishes and didn’t ask about it. Thompson probably would have asked it, despite their instructions not to, but they were courteous enough to arrange the interview and I was courteous to oblige.

Fundamentally, I didn’t agree with it, but I respected the request. It had been the first time I was asked not to talk about something. Janet Jackson did a handful of interviews when she was in Toronto after her Super Bowl mischief, and she had more restrictions than anyone, maybe ever. Reporters could not ask about or mention anything about the Super Bowl, her nipple, her brother Michael, Justin Timberlake, or the phrase “wardrobe malfunction.” Eye contact, I hear, was acceptable.

So the request to not talk about McDonald’s didn’t make sense to me. I thought since so many people had seen it, she would want to talk about it and give her side of the story. Guess by not saying anything, she was implying she had nothing more to add. That’s what I infer.

I asked her if the media has been unfair to her.

“I really don’t like to read reviews because I do what I do and I love it so I don’t pay attention to that.” But of course, she said, she doesn’t have to read it to hear about it. “The worst part is how critical people are of somebody just doing their thing and trying to have fun.”

In her eyes, the media had been unfair to her before they even knew Jessica had a sister. There was no way that any interview she did to promote her debut album would be without Jessica questions. She knew exactly what she was getting into from the beginning.

Ashlee released her debut album at the height of her sister’s popularity, just as Jessica started adopting a ditsy attitude, conveyed to the pop culture savvy through her MTV reality show. Ashlee also got her own reality show, similar to Jessica’s but one that focused more on creating her album than her personal life.

So the nepotism charges were inevitable. Her sister was famous, she wasn’t. Deductive reasoning: she’ll be famous because her sister is famous. It’s an injustice, the jealous folks might say. Every other brother or sister, son or daughter, who has tried to start a career in the public eye has been accused of nepotism. Inductive reasoning therefore suggests that Ashlee will face the same charges. And she did.

When “Autobiography” was released in July of 2004, she was able to claim ownership of a feat that Jessica never did and still has not done: it debuted at number one on the Billboard album chart.

Some hypothesized that the accomplishment was a sign that she was out of her sister’s shadow. Of course, as impressive as the feat was, Ashlee came into this world of celebrity second, and the numbers game means little to people outside of her record company’s offices, so no, she was still in her sister’s shadow. Richer, yes. More famous than Jessica, no.

Besides the nepotism charges, nobody had any warranted complaints about her first album. She wasn’t the best singer in the world, but neither was John Lennon. The lyrics weren’t going to earn her a book deal, but Celine Dion is still waiting for her first pen and pad of paper. And the people with these diminutive complaints weren’t her target audience at all, so she was never worried.

And then, on October 23, 2004, she scored one of Saturday’s Night Live’s most memorable moments. But she scored on the wrong net.

Coming out for her second song, the wrong track was cued, and her voice was heard singing, but her lips were not moving. The track stopped, she leaped into a jig, and then walked off stage.

What made it worse, for her, was that a 60 Minutes camera crew caught the whole thing, since they were coincidently on set filming an unrelated story about SNL.

Acid reflux– an inflammation of the esophagus — was the official reason why she was not singing.

It wasn’t like she was the first person to lip-synch. She wasn’t even the first on SNL - the Spice Girls were clearly miming on the show during the height of their popularity, and Shakira used a vocal track just last week. But it was one of the first times someone was caught in the act, especially in front of a huge audience. (Remember, it wasn’t just the teens and 20-somethings watching SNL who saw this. Their parents and grandparents saw it the next week on 60 Minutes. Families could bond over Ashlee Simpson’s misfortune!)

So you’re caught. What can you do? Hide? Ashlee wanted no part in such a plan. Less than 48 hours later, she appeared on the Radio Music Awards, singing live this time, even joking about the whole incident by playing the wrong song to start her performance. She also sang at the Orange Bowl in January, in front of a bunch of drunk male college kids. I could have told her that she would get booed. Sure, they were booing partly because of the lip-syncing, but that was just an excuse. Britney, ‘N Sync, Shaggy, her sister, her brother-in-law at the time; they all would have been booed. Rock, that’s the only genre they wanted to hear.

She said that at no time in her year of distress did she ever consider quitting the music business.

“I’m one of those people that I like what I do and I have great fans out there and I get to play shows every night for them, so no, I wasn’t thinking about leaving the music business because of one situation.”

Seriously, not ever?

“There were definitely a lot of people against me and I never thought it would be that big of a deal. I knew it would be a big deal, but I didn’t think it would be like… you know?”

Not even when your movie, “Undiscovered,” completely bombed? It grossed less than $2 million in U.S. theatres and was pulled after two weeks. Those are Andy Dick numbers.

“I didn’t expect that movie to really be a box office hit. It was something I did to learn.”

Of course she’s not going to quit the business! Why would she when she still has a strikingly high amount of fans who have made her a success a second time over?

Her sophomore album, “I Am Me,” suffered no slump when it was released in October. It debuted at number one and will achieve platinum status any week now. It’s still selling about 50,000 copies a week, two months after its release.

“I did not expect to debut at number one with this record. I was just excited to make it. It was cool to see that my fans were all out there and wanted to hear the new record.”

It has more of a dance feel to it than on her debut, Ashlee said, and it’s a good album to listen to in the car.

“Would you listen to it in the car?” I asked.

“No.” Awkward silence as I gave her a second to think about that some more. “I mean, I would if it wasn’t me.” Ah, makes more sense.

The road to a second number one album was not completely smooth- never seems to be with a Simpson (though at least her road didn’t have a police chase like an unrelated Simpson). People held up signs and protested, well, her existence at some promotional stops. The reviews were not so pretty either. And there was that McDonald’s visit (McDonald’s stocks haven’t been as high as they are now since early 2001, but I’m not suggesting Ashlee had anything to do with it).

Criticize Ashlee if you must, but nobody can say she shies away from the controversy and tribulation. She sings about SNL twice on the album: “Catch Me When I Fall” is about feeling weak and alone after making a mistake, while “Beautifully Broken” is about picking yourself back up. She accepted an invitation to perform again on the show in October.

“I was nervous but it was more of an excited nervous that I got the chance to go back,” she said. “When that happened, I wanted to go back on SNL the next day. Let me sing!”

Ashlee can laugh about the incident now.

“Did you catch Family Guy Sunday night?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Oh they were making fun of it in a funny way.”

“Oh yeah? What did they do?”

“They had an animation version of you,” I explained, “and they said, ‘and now performing, Ashlee Simpson,’ and then opera was heard and the cartoon Ashlee didn’t know what to do so she did the jig.”

She laughed. “That is funny.”

The real Ashlee did that now famous jig again when she returned to SNL; this time, the smile on her face was genuine, not forced out of embarrassment. “I’m a Texan! I can do the jig anytime I want!” she said.

She may never earn the respect of the purists, and that’s not the goal. She has enough supporters to keep making music for at least the next decade. Along the way, she’ll encounter the haters, and she’ll face them with grace.

Ashlee Simpson, I asked, are you the toughest girl in the music business?

“I don’t know if I’m the toughest girl, but I’m definitely tough,” she said with a giggle.

She risked the same fate as Milli Vanilli, yet found a way to not just prolong her career one more album, but to have it debut at number one.

“In a nation run by swine,” Thompson once wrote, “all pigs are upward-mobile and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely.”

Ashlee Simpson has won.


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