Some people are just stupid.Sometimes there are no other ways to put it. Some people lack foresight. Even me. For months I thought the words Ludacris was rapping on Fergie’s “Glamorous,” “Half a million buttered scones / taken trips from here to Rome.” I would wonder if Luda has taken the time to make arrangements for his 500,000 pastries during all this traveling. Turns out, he says, “Half a million for the stones.” So it goes.Luckily, those people can give hope to the rest of us that we can perhaps do something with our lives.The latest move of blatantly moronic ignorance is complements of Roadrunner Records, the record company that prides itself on being “one of the truly independent record labels,” a label that began with metal and opened itself up to merely hard rock acts. Hosting a plethora of well-know artists such as Nickelback, SlipKnot, CKY and Dream Theatre, it can be safely said the label is by no means a weak one.One of my favored bands, a cabaret rock duo called The Dresden Dolls, is also on the label, and Amanda Palmer, the frontwoman of the Dolls, releases her solo albums through the label.Her new album was set to hit stores soon and, still being a fairly indie artist, blogs were ablaze with excitement. That’s the thing with indie artists — the fans of bands who are harder to access often times pay closer attention to those bands than the mainstream audience does to the radio candy.Hence Roadrunner’s first mistake when it decided to tell Palmer it wouldn’t promote her new album unless she cut out images of her “fat” belly from the music video for her single “Leeds United,” because it wasn’t commercially viable, according to The Guardian.Now, feel free to search the Internet for a clip of the video. Her belly is about as flat as they come, maybe — and this is a stretch in itself — seven pounds overweight.Palmer decided to leave the label rather than deal with such ridiculousness, and her fans, livid with such insulting treatment of Palmer, created a Web site to post photos of their own bellies as a form of rebellion.The site is www.therebellyon.com, and it features bellies of all shapes and sizes, complete with Sharpied inspirational messages for Palmer and attacks on Roadrunner.Now enough has already been written about the sad state of society’s desperation for sex icons in everyone from singers to schoolteachers, and more than enough has been written about the self-esteem issues such stories create for the children of America. All of this is true, and this pathetic excuse of a marketing decision is the dream of every critic of our sex-driven culture.My problem with this decision is much smaller than that.Palmer has always been a small icon of a certain type of counterculture. When I had the pleasure of seeing The Dresden Dolls play at Bonnaroo three years ago, the band played at 3 a.m. And Palmer had clearly unshaven armpits—a big fashion faux pas for a supposed sex symbol. On top of this, she was painted the pale white of Casper the Friendly Ghost and, I can’t say for sure, it looked like she didn’t have eyebrows. This is the kind of band it is.None of these things were rare for the band who wrote songs about female masturbation and sang the line “giddy as a gangbanger with a set of sutures where his Magic Johnson ought to be.”The Dresden Dolls were not sex symbols. Amanda Palmer is not Britney Spears (only Spears can claim that horrible privilege).Of course the label saw a typhoon of backlash for their painfully inane choice. I don’t see how they really expected anything different. It’s like burning down a lemon tree after growing it because the fruit was too sour. Does Roadrunner know nothing about the bands on its own label? I would pay to be in the room when that conversation was had. “Sorry, Miss Palmer, we didn’t mind the hairy pits and the bleach white full body makeup, but this half second glimpse of what might be a slightly overweight stomach just has to go.”But hey, people are dumb. The album will surely come out elsewhere, and we’ll just have to wait a bit. Until then, enjoy the hell out of Christmas.But make sure you do a few sit-ups. Turns out a flabby belly can lose you your job. Even if your job is singing. —-Contact Travis Andrews at [email protected]