One Direction’s Liam Payne created a Twitter storm on Sunday when he tweeted his appreciation for controversial Duck Dynasty television personality Willie Robertson and his family. Payne’s tweet came after Willie’s father, Phil, expressed homophobic beliefs and spoke flippantly of racial segregation in the January edition of GQ magazine.
“huge love to you/your family huge respect for your business prosperities and the family values you still all behold. big fan [sic],” Payne tweeted.
The backlash was instantaneous amongst both fans and journalists, prompting Payne to respond.
“Being a fan of someones show and the way they still hold a family together doesnt mean i am ok with all they say,” he wrote.
He then replied to several unrelated Tweets from his fans, took a brief break, and returned to Twitter hours later for a full-fledged rant against “journalists and bloggers”.
“Oh my god can someone literally not be a fan if a show without bring labelled WTf I bought dinner the other day it made a news story,” he wrote in the first of more than ten tweets. “What I gotta do to please you [expletive] I’m a 20 year old just living life as you did when u where twenty but in extraordinary circumstances.”
The boy bander said he would be leaving Twitter until the “freedom of speech law is back” and that he was expecting a call the next morning for cursing on Twitter.
Payne was in the press last week after a photo of him standing on the ledge of a tall building was widely circulated online. He tweeted an apology on January 15 for his behaviour and urged fans to refrain from copying his dangerous antics.
