"... from the actress Julia Roberts to the singers Joan Baez and Barbra Streisand.... The entries were also full of references to Hollywood stars, some of whom seemed star-struck over him.... Barbra Streisand called asking for vaccine advice. When Dr. Fauci told her he listened to her music on Alexa, the virtual assistant, she confessed she didn’t know what Alexa was. 'I accidentally butt called her later in the evening,' Dr. Fauci wrote, and when he played her music over Alexa, she 'absolutely loved it!' Joan Baez painted a portrait of him. Julia Roberts introduced him at an awards ceremony. 'She is so charming, natural, fun and amazingly beautiful,' Dr. Fauci wrote of Ms. Roberts. 'When my image came up on the screen,” he added, “she gasped and said that every time she sees me her throat gets dry and she gets nervous.'"
"These are the things that over the past hundred-odd years have been increasingly invested with importance by a cultural superstructure bent on working the population to death in miserable jobs, by fooling us into thinking that the rest of the time we are having 'fun.'... These are the activities that, because I do not enjoy them, have always led me to believe that I am not having a fun life myself. For I do not dance and will not dance and have never been to a gig or festival. I don’t like parties and I can’t watch films and the company of other people is mostly disappointing to me. And fashion and fast food and casual sex, although I’ve dabbled, have only ever depressed me. With the result, of course, that I tend to feel I have missed out terribly. That I 'haven’t had much fun in my life.'"
"... to fuss over her work. But what she heard surprised her. 'I didn’t realize, actually, that my vocals were that good ’til they played me the new one,' she said, before laughing. 'I thought, "Oh my God. That girl can sing."' That, of course, is the shock of 'Live at the Bon Soir.'"
Wow! This is fantastic! And who needs Streisand fussing about the state of the country rather than "fuss[ing] over her work"? Art is not a frivolous "fuss"!
1550 M. Coverdaletr. O. WerdmuellerSpyrytuall & Precyouse Pearlexxi. sig. Hvjv Why shulde any man..becomberhym selfe about that thing?
I'm reading the Oxford English Dictionary, specifically the entries under the second definition of the prefix "be-," which is used "Forming intensive verbs, with sense of 'thoroughly..., soundly, much, conspicuously, to excess, ridiculously,'" and which arose this morning — as these things do — in the context of "bepenised."
I had blogged a quote that referred to "the spectacle of bepenised straight heterosexual males." Quite aside from the context — go back to that post if you care about context — there was some clamor over the word "bepenised."
My dear husband Meade commented:
To bepenised or not to bepenised…
Bespectacled. Bepenised. Bemused.
And now, I'm very proud and happy to present one of my newest and nicest friends:
Said Barbra Streisand, about Michael Jackson, when she was asked about the new documentary "Leaving Neverland" (Variety).
“You can say ‘molested,’ but those children, as you heard them say [later, as adults], they were thrilled to be there. They both married and they both have children, so it didn’t kill them.”
When asked if she’s angry with Jackson, she replies, “It’s a combination of feelings. I feel bad for the children. I feel bad for him. I blame, I guess, the parents, who would allow their children to sleep with him. Why would Michael need these little children dressed like him and in the shows and the dancing and the hats?”
She's getting a lot of criticism for that. I'm seeing (on Twitter) that people are saying she's defending pedophilia. She's at least empathizing with the predicament of the pedophile.
She also said something negative about #MeToo: "Unfortunately, it’s going to cause a lot of women not being hired because men are worried they’ll be attacked." There, she's empathizing with the right side, the women, but she's empathizing for the wrong reason.
Streisand hates Trump and she's pushing her new album "Walls" (get it?). She seems to be one of those people who feel sure they're on the right side and there's a danger to that. Confident in your goodness, you can get too comfortable displaying your empathy. You can make mistakes. It can be amusing to laugh at such people when they trip up. But I feel bad for her. Her needs are her needs, coming from whatever childhood she had or whatever DNA she has.
Spending the day with Streisand at her home overlooking the Pacific Ocean* reveals someone who lives up to her reputation as being much less self-assured than one might expect.** Her chronic stage fright prompts her on several occasions to kick everyone but the photographer out of the rooms where she is being shot. She stage-manages some of the setups and lighting cues, true to the perfectionist that she is. She even reshoots a series of short video interviews to her precise liking: “I know how this should look,” she declares.
Among the residents of that house are 3 Coton de Tulear dogs. 2 of them — Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett — are clones of a dog — Samantha — that died in 2017.
“They have different personalities,” Streisand says. “I’m waiting for them to get older so I can see if they have her brown eyes and her seriousness.”
There's also this about Hillary Clinton:
“I said to her the last time I saw her, ‘You were just too smart.’” In fact, she’s not convinced that Trump beat Clinton. “I really believe she won the election,” Streisand says. “I’ve talked to senators from Michigan and Wisconsin. I do believe, like I believed during Bush, they were playing with those voter machines. And [Al Gore] lost by 537 votes out of 104 million. And now, in retrospect, Bush looks quite good compared to Trump. At least he’s not mean-spirited. He’s not a guy who is retaliating for what Obama did at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.”
She has a movie theater in that big house, but sometimes she actually goes out to the movies:
“My husband and I like to go to those theaters where you get food,” Streisand says. “They have one in the Valley where they have little spring rolls, great ice-cream sundaes and truffle french fries. You’re there thinking, ‘How many heads were on this thing?’ I feel like I should bring a towel.”
Oh! The common people! With their heads. Ugh! You need a towel to protect yourself from what oozes out of them. At first when I read that, I thought the towel was for the mess she and the husband made with all that ice cream and french fries, but no, it was revulsion at the contamination of the chair backs, even in a place in the Valley where the french fries are truffle french fries. You want us to go out to see your movies, but you're telling us public theaters are disgusting, because of the people. And your movies are about people... yet people disgust you. Why would I want to absorb what you have to say about people... especially if it requires me to sit in a chair that's been sat in by peeeepulll...***
What I love about this is how she means to be a committed lefty, but it's all always so cluelessly intertwined with self-regard and personal entitlement. I mean, look at this:
[Shooting "The Prince of Tides," she] wanted everyone to stay a little late, because [Nick] Nolte was in a head space where she thought he could nail a scene that called for his character to be tired. But the camera operator and the crew banded together and told her they wanted to go home. Nolte took their side (although he called her later that night to apologize). “So I had to walk off the set. It would have literally taken 10 minutes, but they were fucking with me.” The next morning, Nolte needed 17 takes to get it right, because he was too rested. “Today I wouldn’t ask the question,” Streisand says. “I would tell them. And if you don’t want to do it, don’t bother to come back to work tomorrow. I wouldn’t be afraid of that. But then, I was afraid of it.”
A committed lefty would care about labor issues and empathize with the mundane tiredness of the working man. But she was attentive to the tiredness of Nick Nolte, which he could use to play a scene where his character was tired instead of having to do the work of an actor and pretend to be tired. Oh! That was so hard. Took 17 takes. And her regret is that she wasn't self-assured enough to dictate to the crew, and that fucked-with Nolte took their side. Ah, but the weasley little man paid the price: 17 takes it took him to act tired when he was well-rested. Poor (rich) man.
________________________
So I wouldn't be so sure I knew "How Actual Smart People Talk About Themselves." That's the title of a piece at The Atlantic by James Fallows, who's implicitly talking about himself, implicitly assuring us that he is a smart man who knows the smart people. That is, he is one of the elite who got snookered in the last election.
But the people Fallows talks about in his article are scientists and computer people. Wilde was a brilliant humorous writer, famous, especially, for short, hilarious sentences. Trump is much more like Wilde than like Bill Gates and that guy who won the Nobel Prize in medicine when he was in his 40s.
Here's Fallows:
Virtually none of them (need to) say it. There are a few prominent exceptions, of talented people who annoyingly go out of their way to announce that fact. Muhammed Ali is the charming extreme exception illustrating the rule: he said he was The Greatest, and was. Most greats don’t need to say so....
Once you admit there's an exception, you've got to say Trump is not like the exception. But Trump is like Muhammad Ali. He's making his reputation in large part by speaking entertainingly to the public. And, like Oscar Wilde's declaration of genius, Ali's proclamation of greatness felt like exuberant, extroverted fun to those who loved him. What Trump is doing feels like that too. If you hate Trump, you'll balk at that, but you need to know that there were many people who reacted negatively to Ali's "I am the greatest." I remember it very well, because I loved "I am the greatest" at the time, and I remember why I loved it. It was liberating. You could throw off your inhibition and proclaim your greatness.
That's unwholesome. Some people take the idea of unwillingness to go on living seriously, and I consider Cher one of the great survivors.
But quite apart from the terrible example of threatening suicide — especially when you're a popular, attractive celebrity with a nice, comfortable life — making the election about you personally is politically wrong. If you really believe a particular President would be devastatingly harmful to the country, your leaving the country doesn't change that reality. Presumably, you are trying to say you care about your fellow citizens, not yourself. The country will be in the same predicament, whether you're here to experience it or not.
Much as I hate the implication of suicide, I've got to give Cher credit for seeing that leaving the planet is the necessary relocation if she wants to avoid witnessing the horror of a disastrous U.S. presidency.
Barbra Streisand said she'd move to Australia if Donald Trump is elected. What sense does that make? The news of what's going on in America will reach you in Australia just as it reaches you in your posh enclave in Malibu. If you don't want to have to know what's happening to the people of America, you'll have to shut off the news flow — turn off the TV, don't go on the internet. That's as true in Australia as it is in Malibu.
To my mind, those who talk about moving somewhere else are revealing that they're thinking of themselves, not the American people. And maybe that is exactly what they mean to say: If Donald Trump wins, then I don't respect the American people, and I don't want to live anywhere near them.
But you're already up on a cliff in Malibu. What difference does it make if you go farther away? The difference seems to be: I want to engage in conspicuously snubbing these awful people, the Americans. Yes, I've already isolated myself from them, and I'm perched on the edge of the left coast. But I need to do something more to make news of my snub for you people I've never wanted anywhere near me.
I mean, it wasn't a word until Hillary Clinton blurted it out in one of the worst quotations I've ever seen a political candidate produce:
“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables, right?” Clinton told the friendly audience fired up to see Barbra Streisand perform at the cavernous Cipriani on Wall Street. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it.”
A comfortable setting. I hadn't noticed that Barbra Streisand was involved in this headslappingly stupid revelation of the contents of the mind of Clinton. We're frequently assured that Hillary Clinton is very intelligent — and we're being asked to rely on her judgment — but this was incomprehensibly stupid. Remember "Bushisms" and "Palinisms"? My post heading, above, commemorates one of the best Bushisms: "They misunderestimated me."
It's dangerous to misjudge a person as dumber than he really is, but it's dangerous — in different ways — to think that someone is smarter than she really is. And obviously, there are different aspects of intelligence. In a President, we want someone who can perceive all the factors and resolve complex issues with good decisions (as opposed to, say, nailing every geography question like What is Aleppo? or memorizing and reciting elaborate policy statements). Hillary seems to have let the audience in her immediate presence — Streisand fans — to loosen her up — she sounds drunk — and to say something that perhaps has already gotten laughs behind closed doors with intimates.
I'm not saying I think she did drink before speaking, only that — on the recording — I hear the woozy tones of the lowered inhibition and slack facial musculature you could get from drinking too much but that I assume she soaked up from her luxuriating position in front of an adoring crowd.
And I think we need a President whose judgment is NOT impaired by her immediate surroundings but who knows how to keep unseen people and places clearly in mind when figuring things out for us and for the rest of the world.
Not only did Hillary Clinton fail to anticipate how her remark would be heard outside of the ultra-glamorous Cipriani, but she also envisioned tens of millions of Americans in "grossly generalistic" terms — as if absurdly crude stereotyping belonged in presidential decisionmaking and people can be understood and dismissed as worthless under big inflammatory labels like "racist" and "sexist." It's not just an unfortunate quote that no one will forget. It's a revelation of a quality of mind that is exactly what we shouldn't want in a President.
And, for the record, "generalistic" isn't a word. It's as bad as any Palinism or Bushism, and I think some coinages — like "misunderestimate" (but not "refudiate") — are good. But "generalistic" isn't self-deprecating humor. It's a set-up for a kick at people she regards as not only beneath her, but not worth any care or concern at all. It's unnecessarily complicated. Why say "to just be grossly generalistic" when you can say "just to grossly generalize"? I'm suspicious of people who grab for bigger-than-necessary words — puffing themselves up, intimidating the poorly educated — so I'm taking the trouble to catch her on this choice of a nonstandard word.
Emails an old friend, linking to The New York Times. And sure enough, here's what got past the NYT copy editors:
Backed by an elastic band and aided by teleprompters, she spent a lot of her more than two hours onstage explaining the stories behind songs and performances and album covers.
A card from Barbra Streisand postmarked November 1978, for example, thanks Mr. Dylan for sending flowers and playfully suggests that they make a record together; there is no evidence of a response.
As I remember it, first he sent me flowers and a lovely note, asking me if I would like to sing with him. In return, I sent him the note that’s in his archive, thanking him for the flowers and the invitation.
Okay, but the NYT said there was no evidence of a response. Anyway, Streisand claims a response, wiping out the unpleasant impression that one might get flowers and a nice invitation from Bob Dylan and fail to respond. But Streisand ups her prestige to a whole new level by sharing another letter that she got from Bob Dylan:
Years later … when “Yentl” was about to come out … he sent me his latest album, along with the letter I still have. In it, he writes, “There are some songs on this album which I’m sure you would love to do.” He adds, “I’m looking forward to seeing your movie. Maybe you can direct me in one of mine.” And then he goes on to say something that still means so much to me: “You are my favorite star. Your self-determination, wit and temperament and sense of justice have always appealed to me.”
There's no claim that she responded to that kind note, and Streisand ends with a statement that she's going "to send a copy of his letter to Bob, so it can be included in his archive, as well as mine."
So don't anyone ever forget that Barbra Streisand is, as she has always told us, the greatest star:
Why, exactly, would another Bill Clinton affair have a big effect, even if it is Barbra Streisand? Seems more like Streisand is seeking attention for her book.
Or... well, Streisand is capable of doing some serious damage when she sets her mind to it. Look:
Our sources tell us ... a female flight attendant [on some billionaire's private jet] noticed the dog [Barbra's 12-year-old Coton de Tulear ]and went over to pet her, but Sammie snapped, biting the woman's hand ... puncturing the skin and opening a wound that required stitches.
... don't just go over and pet somebody's dog.
(Virtually all the best-rated comments at TMZ make the same point: "Don't jst reach out and pet somebody dog," "You don't walk up to a dog that doesn't know you or that you are not familiar with and try to pet it," "You never pet a dog without the permission of the owner first," etc.)
Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, who danced a pas de deux from “La Corsaire,” the Ballet Folklorico, Alfred Hitchcock, Bobby Darin, Carol Channing, Woody Allen, Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews performing a duet, Harry Belafonte, Ann Margret, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Johnny Carson, and Barbra Streisand.
Other celebrities present:
Peter, Paul and Mary, The Brothers Four, Mike Nichols, Elliot Gould, Bobby Darrin, Jerry Herman, David Merrick, Sophie Loren and Carlo Ponti, John Reardon, Gregory Peck, and Allen Sherman.
Dances danced: the Jerk, the Frug, the Watusi, and the Monkey.
LBJ and Lady Bird aren't dancing the Jerk, Frug, Watusi, or Monkey in that picture, but they are dancing, and "LBJ was the first president since George Washington to dance at his own Inaugural Ball."
A firstier first involving Lady Bird on that inauguration day is: "Mrs. Johnson was the first President’s wife to hold the Bible at the swearing-in ceremony."
And this pair of ads on the facing page caught my eye:
Two competing images of sexiness from late 1976. Who knew then that the Rocky image would be the much more enduring one. The man, alone with his armpits. Not the man and the woman, with hands thoroughly entangled in curly hair. Rocky even has the more enduring font. And they tried so hard with all those futuristic serifs stabbing their way through the adjoining letters in "A Star Is Born."
Anyway, after finding what I'd actually been looking for — news of the concerts Lou Reed played in NYC in the 70s — I went in search of The Wind in the Willows. I hope you enjoyed that hippie, trippy sojourn into the land of the gentle people, that canyon of if-not-your-then-my mind that was the 1960s, before the mean old 70s came along and made everything so harsh and cruel.
A lot of people I talked to after the election were feeling isolated. So I made a place for them to meet each other and hopefully, feel less alone and more connected to like-minded people whether for business or just to share ideas.
Libertarians who are feeling isolated and alone? Doesn't that come with the libertarian territory? They need a "place" where they will feel more connected?
Instead of saying the place is for libertarians, Helen is saying it's "liberty-minded people." People is a collectivist word. Why not for liberty-minded individuals? Because they're so lonely! They need people. They're people who need people. They were letting their grown-up pride, hide all the need inside, acting more like children than children.
“Lauren was the only person I saw with the deepest acting skills, the capacity to sing everything in this role and an emotional richness that really worked for Fanny at all ages,” [director Bartlett] Sher said, noting that “Funny Girl” is told largely in flashbacks. “It was a wonderful surprise. She wasn’t honestly a front-runner for the part until she called me, asked to audition and came in and blew us all away.” Mr. Sher had directed Ms. Ambrose in the 2006 Broadway revival of “Awake and Sing!”
Cool! Ambrose played Claire on "Six Feet Under," and I'm not sure if she ever sang in that part, but back in 2004, I heard her sing "God Bless the Child" on the old Isaac Mizrahi show and I was blown away.
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