Despite Miley Cyrus' use of it even receiving the endorsement of her dad, the inventor of the foam finger isn’t exactly thrilled at what Cyrus did with his product at this weekend’s VMAs. Iowa native Steve Chmelar invented the oversized novelty in 1971, and was tracked down by FoxSports this week—because, presumably, the network had to fill space on its site, and like so many of us, wanted to find a way to talk about Miley Cyrus without actually talking about it. And Chmelar—who says he’s a much bigger Julie Andrews fan than a Miley Cyrus fan, by the way—claimed that the former Hannah Montana star “took an honorable icon that is seen in sporting venues everywhere and degraded it,” ignoring the hundreds of thousands of photos that have been taken in the past 40 years of people putting his creation up their noses, down their pants, or on other peoples’ crotches.
Fortunately, Chmelar says he’s sure that, despite this horrific event, the sanctity of the foam finger shall remain intact. He told FoxSports that “the foam finger has been around long enough that it will survive this incident”—or, at least, as long as polyurethane lasts, anyway.