Coal Miner's DaughterMove over President Obama, there's a new birth certificate controversy in town. And this one is even sillier. It turns out Country singer Loretta Lynn has been lying about her age for years.

Ahem. She is a celebrity. And a female one at that. This is what these ladies do! The real surprise here is that people are shocked at all. Shocked, specifically, that this means Lynn was not married at 13-years-old, a bit of her life story that made the biopic Coal Miner's Daughter so affecting.

But to all the people calling her out as a big fat phony today, I have to ask. Are you people crazy?

According to the "real" birth certificate scrounged up by the Associated Press, Loretta Lynn was actually 15 when she got married. And now we're supposed to believe that this discrepancy somehow "undermines" (the word being bandied about by the media today) the Sissy Spacek/Tommy Lee Jones hit movie's storyline. The way people are talking today, it's as if her whole sad tale of growing up in abject poverty in Appalachia is suddenly the American dream.

She was still a child even with those extra few years, folks. If you don't think so, go ahead, find your 15-year-old daughter a matchmaker, and get her hitched. Not game? Yeah, me neither.

OK. She lied. Loretta Lynn is now 80, not 77. That sucks. But a little perspective for you folks:

Loretta Lynn got married to Oliver Lynn at FIFTEEN, an age at which American kids (because they are still kids) can't drive, vote, drink, sign a contract, drop out of high school ... I think that's enough to drop this from "scandal" level down a few notches. 

Is this Loretta Lynn birth certificate news really a scandal? Or is it much ado about nothing?

 

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