Ryan Seacrest (finally) comments on Mariah Carey – ‘New Year’s Rockin’ Eve’ performance

It certainly took Ryan Seacrest long enough to comment on Mariah Carey and her controversial performance on “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” but he now has … and it is also just about as political as humanly possible.

Speaking on his radio show this morning, Seacrest started things off by talking for a moment about Mariah’s history with the program, and how he knows that she more than capable of performing the songs at the center of her set:

“I’m just catching up on all this, but there’s been a lot reported about the performance in Times Square for Mariah. And, you know, just to talk about it for a second, it is difficult to perform in Times Square … She had done it before because she was the first musical guest that we had had live when I started doing the show years — about a decade ago. So she had seen it. She knows what Times Square’s about. It’s complicated … There’s all kinds of technical things going on.”

While he was sympathetic in many ways towards Mariah (who he knows rather well stemming from her year as a part of “American Idol”), at the same time he also came out in defense of the show and the production company after there were claims that the show may have intentionally set her up to fail for attention:

“I know this team of producers. I’ve known these guys for years. I knew Dick Clark very, very well. This is a team that wants to do everything they can to accommodate any artist. We are in the business of wanting people to look good and, believe me, tricky things, tough things can happen. It happens on live television. You’ve seen artists before in a concert pull out their earpiece because something happens. Something could have happened in the ears. I wasn’t in those ears … It’s just unfortunate that it comes to all of this. It’s a night of celebration and a night of fun.”

We we’ve said multiple times over at this point, we do think that this will be a chance for everyone to take a deep breath now and start to move forward. We’re not sure just how much more there is to even say about the show at this point. It’s over, and we don’t think it will stop people from performing on it or people from hiring Carey in the future.

Do you think that this is now the end of the road for this controversy? Be sure to share now in the comments below. (Photo: ABC.)