Newsgasm: Sara Evans dances around the questions

The Sara Evans interview on Dancing with The Stars was a strange one. We didn’t expect her to come out with any porny details of what led her to file for divorce and leave the show – she’s already splattered those explicit accusations all over the media, and no one wants to hear about three-way sex on a family show– but for a country music star, Sara was pretty smug and laid back about her role in the most sex-soaked sordid scandals of the year. No tears, no pleas for understanding. Not very “country” at all.

While the newsmagazine-length interview was winding down, with Sara poured back on the couch, cuddled with her spurned dance partner, repeating the same double-entendre joke about him being an “Albanian,” that was when the “Dancing” producers blew their chance. That was when Dance contestant Jerry Springer should have sauntered in with a microphone and gotten down to dirt.

Instead, the supposedly shattered country singer plugged her next concert tour, which will be choreographed by an “Albanian.”Sara’s got secrets. And they’re bound to come out. But this 20/20-style interview (they even had the flower arrangement in the middle of the shot) between the with host Tom Bergeron wasn’t going to be it. The Dance producers played it right, teasing the interview for more than an hour. And Bergeron the former morning show host did a professional job– as good as Diane Sawyer with Mel Gibson and a hell of lot better than Billy Bush and Michael Jackson– but there was no way he could have asked the questions the audience wanted to hear.

And the big question wasn’t about sex, but about how Sara Evans, country star, could have so publicly broken the show business–and especially country music– Golden Rule: no matter the heartbreak, no matter the troubles, the show must go on.

Sara’s show didn’t go on. And she contradicted herself by insisting “I’m completely against divorce, and when she explained why she dropped the bomb on a network reality show: “The good thing is that I’m so used to performing,” Sara bragged, “and as you know, as entertainers we have that ability to just sort of flip the switch. Turn it on, do the dance and, you know, make it through the day. That’s what I was hoping was going to happen throughout the entire life of the show.”

Right. So why didn’t she turn it on? Sara claims something happened in the Beverly Hills mansion where she, porn-happy husband Craig and the three kids were camped out while Sara appeared on the show. “It was something personal and traumatic and hard for my children,” she said. “Things went drastically downhill, 100 miles an hour.”

Ws it the discovery of porn on Daddy’s home computer? The photos of him in an “aroused” state? Craig’s showdown with the Albanian–er, “sodomite” show stylist?

“I needed to be right there,” she said, “to look at my son at all times to see the expression on his face and, you know, see if he’s crying. I put him on the phone with our pastor immediately. I knew that nothing in my career, no television show, nothing was more important than that.”

We suspect that Sara timed her departure and announcement for maximum exposure. But it’s obvious that there’s something a lot bigger going on here. And there’s a lot more to come. Sara Evans knows it. We’d bet we’re going to be seeing a lot more of her–in more ways than one. People magazine reports a source close to Sara’s husband as saying: “Craig is going to drop a bombshell this week. He will be telling his side of the story.”

If only Sara were a little more candid, a little bit more country, we might have more sympathy when everything hits the fan.

–Tabloid Baby