"Back when Lyndon B. Johnson was president and the latest dance craze was the Frug, Washington high society was transfixed by..."

"... Barbara Howar, a sparkling socialite from North Carolina who helped the first lady do her hair, mingled with a visiting Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon and turned her Georgetown home into a center of Swinging Sixties entertainment.... Defiantly unorthodox, she wore pajamas to an embassy gala, drove an orange motorcycle through a Georgetown park and had a barbed wit that brought her a reputation as the enfant terrible of the capital’s social scene. Reflecting on the private life of Henry Kissinger, one of many diplomats and politicians who frequented her parties over the years, she quipped, 'Henry’s idea of sex is to slow the car down to 30 miles an hour when he drops you off at the door.'..."

From "Barbara Howar, whose hit memoir dished on D.C. society, dies at 89/Initially known as a Georgetown hostess, she became a best-selling author with her candid 1973 memoir, 'Laughing All the Way.' She later interviewed celebrities for 'Entertainment Tonight'" (WaPo)(free access link).

Howar launched her writing career with a 1968 Ladies’ Home Journal story called "Why LBJ Dropped Me." Looking (unsuccessfully) for a copy of "Why LBJ Dropped Me," I stumbled into this cool photograph, "Singer Bobby Darin sits with his girlfriend, Barbara Howar." I love her shoe. Grommets — so 60s! Ah, well, the 60s are long gone, and here I am, a creature of the 60s, entertained by obituaries, saying goodbye to everyone who was tormented by LBJ and danced the frug.

You don't see the phrase "enfant terrible" so much anymore. The OED says it's "A child who embarrasses his or her elders by untimely remarks; transferred a person who compromises his or her associates or his or her party by unorthodox or ill-considered speech or behaviour; loosely, one who acts unconventionally." We used to celebrate the enfants terribles. Didn't we? Do we still? Answer without saying "Trump" or you are too boring to wear pajamas to an embassy gala and drive an orange motorcycle through a Georgetown park.

Impeachment coverage looks like a quirky number in a show choreographed by Bob Fosse.

Impeachment coverage looks rad pic.twitter.com/FvBi94JjCv

— Peter Hamby (@PeterHamby) January 31, 2020

ADDED:

"But the problem wasn’t the unsexy sex, or not mostly. It was that, the 1960s and 1970s having passed, people began to notice..."

"... that Fosse didn’t really have many steps at his command—characteristically, he acknowledged this—or, in the end, many emotions. He remained very influential. In the 1980s, you could barely see a dance in a music video—let alone a TV commercial or a Cirque du Soleil number or a dancercise routine—that wasn’t filtered through his style. But an influence is not necessarily a good influence.... It is Fosse’s comment on both his fears of being second-rate and his cynicism about his ability to manipulate an audience. 'I hesitate about a movement and think: Oh no. They’ll never buy that. It’s too corny, too show-biz. And then I do it, and they love it.' So he does it again, and he hates himself, and hates them."

From "Crotch Shots Galore" a review by Joan Acocella of 2 books about Bob Fosse in the NY Review of Books.

"Roy Scheider here. You know who definitely need a bigger boat?"

"The montage of dead people, which I was most certainly not in. What's with the arbitrary cut-off date? I starred in two iconic movies; I played Bob Fosse; I just died. I didn't expect to beat Heath Ledger on the applause-o-meter or anything, but Jesus H., who does a guy have to fuck to make the 'In Memoriam' grade around here? …You know, if I thought I would still be apologizing for The Myth Of Fingerprints in the afterlife, I would have told my agent to shove that script sideways."

Television Without Pity does the Oscars show. (People seem to forget that the Oscars is a TV show.) Click on the little pics along the top to get all the snark.