KEY POINTS:
She had not been seen since the murder of her mother, brother and nephew in Chicago last October, so when Jennifer Hudson strode into the Tampa stadium to sing the national anthem before the Super Bowl, the fans were with her. And so they were when she was done. A Howitzer to the Heavens, one critic raved.
No one would doubt the courage of Ms Hudson, who first captured hearts as a competitor on American Idol and before long found herself accepting an Oscar for her role in Dreamgirls.
So when word got around that Ms Hudson had lip-synched her performance, America wasn't sure how to react. The producer of the pre-game musical acts, Ricky Minor, had told the Associated Press as soon as the game was over that on his insistence she had mouthed her way through a recording she had made a week earlier.
Yet most reports of her appearance made no reference to the technological trickery, presumably because editors felt Ms Hudson deserved a break from criticism so soon after her multiple bereavements. Or it may be because duping audiences at live events seems almost to have become the norm.
Two weeks ago the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and violinist Itzhak Perlman string-synched their way through a musical prelude to the swearing-in of Barack Obama. Their excuse was the cold. Faith Hill, who sang America the Beautiful before Ms Hudson, also relied on a recording .
Mr Minor said Tampa was Ms Hudson's first outing since the murders, for which her estranged former brother-in-law has been charged.
- THE INDEPENDENT
