American Idol feud snowballs out of control

When behind-the-scenes footage of American Idol judges Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey arguing on set in North Carolina hit the Internet, pundits wondered whether the leaked video was staged to drum up ratings. However, Barbara Walters, Stevie Nicks and Steven Tyler apparently take these things very seriously. Walters accused Minaj of threatening the R&B diva with a gun and Tyler lambasted the hip-hop star as talentless. Nicks, meanwhile, outdid them both by imagining a gruesomely violent end to the trifling ordeal, remarks she later attributed to fatigue after a long day of interviews.

“How dare this little girl!” the Fleetwood Mac star told a reporter. “If I had been Mariah I would have walked over to Nicki and strangled her to death right there... I would have killed her in front of all those people and had to go to jail for it.”