BreatheHeavy featured in Vanity Fair's new #FreeBritney story

[Jordan Miller]

Hey guys, I spoke with Vanity Fair about the #FreeBritney movement, and would love for you to check the article out. 

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/11/the-oracle-of-britney-spears

Below are the excerpts I was featured in, but please read the whole thing. It's great!

What do you think? Drop me a line in the comments!

 

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To understand the hashtag, we have to go back to 2009.

Jordan Miller sat down at his computer, fuming. For the past week, he’d been updating his Britney Spears fan site BreatheHeavy.com on the pop icon’s conservatorship. The news was making him irate. A story that Spears’s cell phone had been taken away from her sent him over the edge. He tapped out his fury and hit upload on a post that would inadvertently give name to a movement. The headline: “Prisoner Forbidden Phone Privileges.”

“That is so rude,” Miller tells me now, laughing. “Keep in mind I was a teenager.” He was 20 and had been managing BreatheHeavy.com since he launched the site at the ripe old age of 15. “I would never write it that way now. I must have been just outraged, like, ‘This is an injustice, how can you take away Britney Spears’s cell phone!’ ”

Miller ended the post with an imperative that would have consequences: “Open your eyes! FREE BRITNEY!” Though it wasn’t the first time he had used this phrase and wouldn’t be the last, Miller remembers feeling the true gravity of Spears’s situation as he wrote the post.

The term kicked around the internet mostly among fan sites, but only Spears’s super stans seemed to pay it any attention. Then, in April 2019, Miller got a call from Tess Barker and Barbara Gray of Britney’s Gram, the podcast. They gave him a heads-up that they were planning to title a forthcoming episode “#FREEBRITNEY”—and it was going to be a bombshell. A man had called into their podcast’s line and left a voicemail, claiming to be a former paralegal on the Spears team. According to him, Spears had been ordered to take medication she did not want and later was locked up in an institution against her will. “What is happening,” said the man, “is disturbing to say the least.”

 

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While the claims made in the voicemail have not been substantiated, Gray and Barker—who has a background in journalism—said they did verify the man’s identity. Spears’s camp has remained silent on the issue, and no legal action was taken against Britney’s Gram, which Miller thinks is “telling.” And thousands of Britney fans had taken note. #FreeBritney began trending on Twitter. A movement was born.

 

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In fact, as the sun began to peek out from behind the clouds and Wu started a new march around the courthouse, unseen forces were shaping events and exerting control. According to TMZ, the hearing was infiltrated by unknown members of the public, or “Zoom-bombed,” forcing the judge to end the session.

“I was one of the people given information about it, but we don’t really know what happened,” Miller told me. “In terms of if they were #FreeBritney activists—that sounds like a great story. But I don’t know anything about it.”

“You have to think, though,” he added. “How were fans able to hack into the court system? And why wouldn’t the judge just kick them off, and tell them to send a new link or whatever? Why would she have to wait another month to have the hearing?”

 

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And then there is Lou Taylor, Spears’s former business manager, whose husband is a pastor at Calvary Chapel Brentwood, an evangelical church that lists among its ministry resources a gay-conversion counseling service and Mercy Multiplied, a counseling center where some patients say prayer and submission, rather than clinical interventions, are the main treatments. Considering the overlap between Spears’s fan base and the LGBTQ+ community, Taylor’s affiliation with Calvary Chapel seems contradictory. On BreatheHeavy.com, Taylor has been a frequent target. “I mean some of them call her Lou-cifer,” says Miller. While he’s not a fan of how out of hand the online vitriol can get—“tearing someone else down doesn’t help Britney,” he explains—he does think Taylor’s dealings deserve greater scrutiny.

 

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The Brit army may have had cause to celebrate just a few weeks after Miller and I spoke: For reasons that remain unclear, Taylor resigned from her position as Spears’s business manager, according to an October 28 letter from Jamie’s lawyers included in court documents filed by Ingham. Spears was not given notice. Instead, her father quickly replaced Taylor with Michael Kane without discussing his appointment, salary, or terms of employment with Spears—a switch-up which Ingham objected to in the new documents, calling it part of a “blatant attempt by James to retain full functional control of her assets, books and records.”

 

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“I thought it was really interesting that in those documents, there was a photo of a protest sign saying, ‘Jail Jamie. Free Britney. Investigate Lou,’ ” Miller said, suggestively.

 

 

Related:

 

[OnlyBeyonce]

congrats 

[GMFlop]

 

[jordeezy river red]

Wow.  It's amazing to think that this forum is getting so much attention.  I don't think many of us here ever thought that our comments would make it into the public sphere like this 

[Urbanney]

This is amazing. The more media coverage of Britney’s situation, the better. It’s great to have someone with such a balanced view, like you Jordan, to be a spokesperson for the movement, just like the Gram Girls. Thank you for speaking out!
 

I’m looking forward to reading the full thing when I have time. I love a good magazine article

[Slayer]

I just read the article! It was great and I love that you brought to light things the GP may not have known and to shine more of a spotlight on Lou!

The more awareness and pure facts provided to the movement, the better  Amazing work as usual Jordan!

Congratulations Jordan, this is a great achievement! I told you the article would come out well  The amount of attention you and BH are getting lately is amazing and you're a great voice for the fan base, whilst remaining rational and classy.

[Midnight]

This is amazing congrats Jordan. 

[Mgmgmgmg]

YES, Jordan!! This is the publicity we need.

 

EDIT:

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#FreeBritney is sort of like QAnon, but for young, celebrity-obsessed liberals. There is the same deep distrust of the media, a preoccupation with helpless victims, and the righteous belief that the movement is the only thing standing in the way of total disaster. At the center is a hallowed figure whose digital missives warrant intense analysis.

This QAnon comparison is tragic and problematic.

[Jordan Miller]

38 minutes ago, OnlyBeyonce said:

congrats 

Thank you!! Pretty stoked about it!

[Jordan Miller]

35 minutes ago, GMFlop said:

 

[IJustWannaLurk]

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#FreeBritney is sort of like QAnon, but for young, celebrity-obsessed liberals.

...........

Commendable effort, Jordan, but there is an air of mockery throughout the piece that would leave an impartial observer put off by the movement, instead of inspired by it.
 

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The day before, a video was posted to Britney’s Instagram showing the pop star in a crop top and low-cut jean shorts, cycling through her signature poses, and twirling a rose in front of her face. “Definitely a hidden meaning here,” wrote user sia_13_rose.

We may never know the entire truth behind the Britney Spears case. But, as is our uniquely human birthright, we will believe what we want to believe. Stare at that photo of Spears under the awning of a sunlit tree long enough and I swear, eventually you’ll see it, the words “Call 911.”

 

Really? This is her take at the end of the day? Out of everything her fans and the lawyers have pulled out about Britney's story, she mentions the stupid eyelash thing not once, but twice, even using it as an ending statement. What about the fact that Lou was stalking Britney, in her own words? Britney's story is much more serious than this article portrays it to be, and I don't trust random readers to dig into it deep enough to think critically about it. There's too much focus on the fans and their 'erratic' ways. Sort of a "well, if you want to, you'll see conspiracies everywhere!" vibe. Personally, I'm put off by this a great deal and, to date, think the Deep Dive documentary exposes her situation better than anyone else that I've seen. It's not about the fans, about QAnon (what the f.ck), or about celebrity culture. At its core, this is about a woman trapped by psycopaths and the fact that it's been happening for over a decade without anyone questioning it.

[LLuvia]

Congratulations Jordan, Vanity Fair Spain also wrote an interesting article.

[PokemonSpears]

that's awesome, I'm gonna read the full article later today

[Britneylandia]

I haven’t read it but slay lol 

[FemmeFataleBrit]

Congrats, Jordan! 

[ObsessedBritFan1]

Why did they use a picture where she looks like half a psychopath and the other like this porcelain skin were all are hoping to have at 90 without the botched plastic sheen to it 

[Brat]

Go Jordan! 

[Jordan Miller]

2 hours ago, jordeezy said:

Wow.  It's amazing to think that this forum is getting so much attention.  I don't think many of us here ever thought that our comments would make it into the public sphere like this 

SOOO cool to see!

[Jordan Miller]

2 hours ago, Urbanney said:

This is amazing. The more media coverage of Britney’s situation, the better. It’s great to have someone with such a balanced view, like you Jordan, to be a spokesperson for the movement, just like the Gram Girls. Thank you for speaking out!
 

I’m looking forward to reading the full thing when I have time. I love a good magazine article

Appreciate that so much  I just wanna make you guys proud!! 

[Jordan Miller]

2 hours ago, Slayer said:

I just read the article! It was great and I love that you brought to light things the GP may not have known and to shine more of a spotlight on Lou!

The more awareness and pure facts provided to the movement, the better  Amazing work as usual Jordan!

Congratulations Jordan, this is a great achievement! I told you the article would come out well  The amount of attention you and BH are getting lately is amazing and you're a great voice for the fan base, whilst remaining rational and classy.

Thank you!! Appreciate the kind words. Yea I was worried about how I'd sound in the end, but I like it!! Glad we can all bask in this honor together