Ariel Levy's New York Magazine profile of Clay Aiken, the fey second season American Idol runner up and new star of the Broadway musical Spamalot, is as peculiarly entertaining as the singing sensation himself. Judging by his statements in this interview, Aiken, who is essentially a fried chicken lollipop made animate, does not battle with his sexuality as popular gossip would have you believe. Rather, he simply embraces a strange, forced asexualism that he credits to his busy work schedule. (Though, he may be, um, forgetting a few things.) Also embraced by the lanky leader of the Claymates is a silly, lonely yokelism that, the piece suggests, will both isolate and embolden him in cold old New York. While Aiken may sit at home every night, alone in his apartment, Levy calls him a "Promosexual", and posits that that bit of him may fit in perfectly with many a self-selling New Yorker. But before she comes to this somewhat sunny conclusion, she tears into him in hilariously bitchy fashion. My favorite segment of the article lies after the jump. [NYM]

Perhaps Clay Aiken is not a homosexual; not every person who is sexually thwarted is in the closet. But the thing that makes Aiken seem much younger than a nearly 30-year-old man is that he insists so incessantly that he is brimming with folksy self-acceptance when he so clearly doesn't have a clue. I don't think Aiken's compulsive self-deprecation, his insistence that he is funny-looking, a dork, a nerd, a neuter, is going to withstand eighteen weeks in New York. I am convinced this city is going to crack Clay Aiken like an egg.