Celebutards Read online

  —Barbra vs. President George W. Bush on her Web site, March 2006

  IN THE CROWDED CELEBUTARD FIELD, there exists stiff competition for the title of Dumbest Woman Alive. Let’s take a look…

  Nancy Pelosi tries to grant a tax break to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Madonna catches a phony British accent. Sheryl Crow campaigns for a limit of one sheet of toilet paper per flush. And Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears prove that literacy (nor panties) are not necessary assets for young ladies. Yet for all the sheer idiocy commonly displayed by starlets and politicians today, it is the elder stateswoman of bimbos who wins the prize, daily demonstrating that a brain is an optional accessory provided a lady has money, fame and adoring fans.

  The planet’s dumbest woman has been famous longer than the younger generation has breathed, yet she shows, time and again, a breathtaking lack of awareness of her own mental shortcomings.

  On her personal Web site, we see the unfiltered rantings of this unglued diva. In speeches and in stage appearances, which patrons pay big bucks to endure, we get to know a lady so fundamentally dim, she should be placed under glass and studied. Yet there she goes again and again, proving that passable grammar and common self-knowledge are commodities as rare as gifted singing pipes. She is Barbra Streisand. She is our patron saint of stupidity.

  When did she begin to go off the rails?

  She was born Barbara Joan Streisand (yes, her name originally was spelled the ordinary way) on April 24, 1942, in Brooklyn, New York, to Emanuel Streisand, a grammar school teacher who died when she was just fifteen-months old, and Diana, a school secretary. Her mother discouraged young Barbara from going into show business because she did not think her little girl was pretty enough to cut it, and suggested that she learn to type instead. Where have I heard this story before? Right. It sounds like a treatment for the 1968 movie Funny Girl. In it, Barbra, as she came to be known, starred as a plain but talented, Jewish gal (it’s based on the life of showgirl Fanny Brice) with skinny legs and a big nose who transforms into a swan after she falls in love with wicked Nicky Arnstein, played by a swarthy Omar Sharif. It’s a pretty fantasy, for which Barbra, appearing in her first movie, split a best actress Oscar with Katharine Hepburn.

  In real life, Barbara dropped the second “A” in her first name shortly after moving to Manhattan after graduating from high school. She was unconventional-looking enough, with a powerful enough singing voice, to pull off the transformation from ugly duckling to American beauty. Despite her mother’s nagging, she never attended a day of college. Why should she? Barbra Streisand learned from an early age never to let her natural deficiencies hold her back.

  Barbra is a singer, that much is not in dispute except, perhaps, in her own brain. She started singing professionally in a gay bar and quickly signed a record deal. Along the way she has won Emmys, Grammys and a pair of Academy Awards—one for acting, the other for Best Song—and became one of the top selling female solo acts of all time, before coming full circle and tying Liza Minnelli as the most popular diva parodied in gay karaoke bars. But Barbra didn’t want to be known as a singer. She badly wanted to be an actress, and therein lies the tension. She did have success on Broadway and in the movies, starting with Funny Girl, but it was her voice the people tuned in to. Eventually, she started producing and directing her own films, including the horrifically embarrassing 1983 movie Yentl, in which Barbra at age forty-one, plays a teenage yeshiva student. Eight years later she put out Prince of Tides, a romance in which her self-conscious and immobile face, trained to tilt toward its good side, appears as if it’s filmed through gauze. Mercifully, she refrained from making films for a while after that.

  Streisand married actor Elliot Gould in 1963, shortly before turning twenty-one, and divorced him eight years later. The union produced a son, Jason. The list of men she is said to have dated is long and varied, from Ryan O’Neal, Tom Smothers, Warren Beatty (who hasn’t?), to Jon Voight, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, producer Jon Peters, Omar Sharif, Don Johnson, Steve McQueen, Kris Kristofferson, Peter Jennings and, at age fifty, a twenty-two year-old Andre Agassi. That pairing evidently could not survive the day an out-to-lunch Barbra gushed about her “Zen master” on live TV during the 1992 U.S. Tennis Open in New York. In 1998, twenty-seven years after divorcing Elliot Gould, she walked down the aisle with James Brolin, a quiet (compared to Barbra) actor who in recent years appeared on TV in commercials as the Midas man.

  I have to conclude that Streisand feels unfulfilled by a career that made her an international superstar, worth an estimated $300 million. She wanted to be an actress. Instead, she’s settled on being a singer who sometimes acts, moving into mature (thank God), charicaturish roles such as that of Roz Focker in 2004’s Meet the Fockers with Dustin Hoffman. At least she kept on her shirt. (She took it off, to her regret and that of millions of movie-goers, in 1970’s The Owl and the Pussycat.)

  Streisand raised a ton of cash for Bill Clinton before the 1992 presidential election, and performed at his inaugural gala. In fact, Barbra has raised more money for Democrats than just about any celebutard worth his Screen Actors Guild card. This has given her permission to produce a personal Web site in which she’s made a slew of horrifying goofs that would cause a woman with an ordinary sense of shame to blush crimson. But we’re talking about Barbra here.

  Her site is a spellbinding mix of giant ego and complete lack of an internal mirror. It features dozens of soft-focus pictures of the star trying to look serious. The purpose of the thing seems to be to give the public, clamoring for all things Barbra, insight into a mish mash of her political views, as well as piquish responses to tabloid reports (which she calls Truth Alerts). And in case you still haven’t realized whom this site is about, her press releases, including one in which she endorses Hillary Clinton for president, include this helpful description: “Legendary filmmaker, artist, and Democratic activist Barbra Streisand.” No wonder the makers of Comedy Central’s show South Park routinely prod her like a pinata. She’s too easy.

  On September 25, 2002, Streisand, along with her “political consultant” Margery Tabankin, faxed a memo to House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, urging “Democrats to get off the defensive and go on the offensive” against Republicans and the war on terror. The problem is, the memo was addressed to Dick “Gebhart,” a laugh riot first reported on the DrudgeReport. Also misspelled in the memo is Saddam Hussein—as “Sadam,” and al-Qaeda as “Al Queda.” Worse, on her Web site, Barbra admitted a tiny goof—the memo was faxed initially not to a Democratic politician such as Gephardt (Gebhart to Babs), but to the office of a Republican. (Tabankin used the classic chick excuse: She said she and Barbra were “emotional” during the faxing.)

  La Streisand handled her gaffe the time-tested celebutard way: She blamed an underling. In a Truth Alert, Barbra explained that she dictated her memo over the phone to a new staffer. “THE IRONIC FURTHER TRUTH,” the alert continued—a posting evidently not dictated to a staffer but posted by the illiterate diva herself—“Hidden in this example of diverted news priorities is the fact that Barbra Streisand is a great speller, meticulous in her written communications!”

  She continued, “The incident illustrates how the Democratic message concerning the failures of this Republican administration are repeatedly pushed aside in the media, pre-empted by silly side-issues. The real truth, the really important and relevant truth” (as opposed to the really unimportant and not terribly significant truth) “is having a hard time getting through.”

  Days later, an unbowed Babs was onstage at a National Democratic Gala in Hollywood when she opened her yap, and thus made herself into an even bigger fool.

  “I find George Bush and Cheney frightening,” Streisand said. “Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft frightening…I find bringing the country to the brink of war unilaterally five weeks before an election questionable—and very, very frightening…” Good, Barbra. You’ve studied the names of cabinet members.

  But
then, she said, “You know, really good artists have a way of being relevant in their time…but great artists are relevant at anytime. So, in the words of William Shakespeare, ‘Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind…And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.’”

  She continued, “Imagine that was written over 400 years ago…It’s amazing how history without consciousness is destined to repeat itself. So…from the words of William Shakespeare to the words of Irving Berlin…”

  Guess what, literature fans? Shakespeare never wrote those words. In fact, the first time these lines appeared anywhere was on the Internet, in the form of mass e-mails. Streisand, it would appear, had fallen for a hoax. A hoax it would have taken a ten-year-old five minutes to uncover!

  Would the diva admit to a mistake? You might as well ask Barbra Streisand to undo her nose job.

  “The authorship of this is important,” she wrote defensively on her site, “but it doesn’t detract from the fact that the words themselves are powerful and true and beautifully written. Whoever wrote this is talented and should be writing their own play.” Wait a minute—so Barbra is using the Dan Rather defense, which the ex-CBS anchor perfected when caught reporting on fake military memos. She’s saying that the truth doesn’t really matter at all, as long as you like what you’re reporting. Maybe she should relaunch her Truth Alerts as BS Alerts.

  You say “Iraqi.” I say “Iranian.” Heck, if you’re one of the biggest-selling female artists of all time, I guess you can call the late Saddam Hussein the leader of Israel if it suits you. Weeks after the Shakespeare debacle, Barbra was again at the top of her ignoramus game, posting a Truth Alert entitled, “REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE ATTACKS BARBRA STREISAND IN ADS IN DESPERATE EFFORT TO CUT INTO CAROLYN McCARTHY LEAD.”

  Writing in the third person, Barbra complained about an ad run by congressional candidate Marilyn O’Grady, who accused her—Barbra says unfairly—of defending Saddam Hussein. O’Grady ran against New York Democratic Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a noted champion for gun control.

  Her alert said: “A Republican/Conservative candidate trying with fading hopes to unseat respected Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy made a last-ditch effort to win headlines by devising ads in which she blatantly misquoted Barbra Streisand, fabricating outrageous quotes and completely misrepresenting Ms. Streisand’s deep opposition to the Iranian dictator, Saddam Hussein…”

  Huh?

  Streisand’s response was typically obfuscating. And offensive. “This is another example of the Republican way of trying to discredit the messenger before the public can get the message. Ms. O’Grady’s deceitful radio and tv ads put egregiously fabricated words in Ms. Streisand’s mouth….”

  At least she didn’t blame anyone else. Her Web site, incidentally, finally located the country of Saddam’s origin and corrected it. It’s Iraq, Barbra. Not Iran. Not Iraque…

  But this was all topped with a big, red bow by a posting she threw up (pun intended) on her site in March 2006. The post is long. It’s loopy. It’s a wonder Streisand hit “Send” before tossing it through the spellchecker. I will cut to the chase, and start with the fourth sentence. All misspellings are the author’s:

  “In the 1970’s, during the Nixon Adminstration, serious political curruption arose and the Republican leadership stepped up and took responsibilty by holding hearings and subpoening administration officials.” Four spelling errors—in one sentence!

  “Eventually, the President was forced to resign rather than face impeachment preceedings that likely would have been successful.”

  Oh, it goes on. And on. Streisand feebly tries to make a point about administration accountability. Or something. (Should I say sumthing?)

  “It is clear that today’s Republican Congressional leaders are not prepared to hold this President accountable. Therefore, it’s critical that people elect members of the Democratic party to the House and Senate so that a new leadership can take control. Only if this occurs, can we even begin to imagine a time when there will be a myriad of investigations so desperatly needed on so many issues…let alone the ultimate investigation which would involve the conduct of the President of the United States and the determination of whether his actions warrented impeachment proceedings.”

  “The arrogance of this C student who maligns his opponents’ crediblity by calling them flip floppers, is the biggest flip flopper himself! When debating Al Gore during the 2000 presidential elections, Bush spoke against nation building, yet went into Irag a year later to national build…which we now see has resulted in disaster.”

  It is almost too much to bear. Aside from the hideously ungrammatical sentence that leads the previous paragraph, and in addition to the obvious misspelling of “Iraq,” she asserts that the United States invaded the country in 2001. Even a D student knows that happened in 2003. But the zaniest aspect of her run-on rant is that the woman who failed to attend a minute of college denigrates Bush as an arrogant “C student.” Bush in fact earned a Master’s of Business Administration degree at Harvard, after earning his undergraduate degree at Yale. While his grade-point average at Yale was a relatively lackluster 77, it should be noted that John Kerry, Bush’s Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, graduated from the same institution two years before Bush, earning an average of just 76.

  Here’s a complete list of the meticulous one’s misspellings:

  Irag. Curruption. Dictatoriship. Crediblity. Adminstration (three times). Warrented. Desperatly. Preceedings. Ouside. Subpoening. Responsibilty.

  Take some responsibility, Babs! A short time after the posting, Streisand’s spokesmouth, Dick Guttman, blamed the errors on the star’s Web hosting company.

  There was no disputing the identity of the woman at the microphone in New York’s Madison Square Garden in October 2006. That’s when Streisand, appearing for the first time since a 2000 farewell concert (she always says goodbye, but never leaves) got irritated by a heckler who didn’t like her skit involving an impersonator of George W. Bush. Frankly, most of the audience, which included a good number of Bush-bashers grew a tad impatient with the tedious politicization of the concert. One fan yelled out something that sounded like, “Communist!” That’s when Streisand blew her stack.

  “Shut the f*ck up, would you?” she shouted, slowly and clearly enunciating the third word. “Shut up if you can’t take a joke!”

  * * *

  Barbra later apologized, but defended her shrewish outburst insanely. “The artist’s role is to disturb.”

  * * *

  She shrieked, “Give him his money back! Go get your money back!” The man left. I hope she returned every penny.

  Barbra later apologized, but defended her shrewish outburst insanely. “The artist’s role is to disturb.”

  There is only one thing disturbing about Barbra Streisand. It’s that anyone, anywhere, continues to listen to a word that comes out of this gold-throated dolt’s mouth.

  4

  Clooney Tunes

  GEORGE CLOONEY

  You can’t beat your enemy anymore through wars; instead you create an entire generation of people revenge-seeking. These days, it only matters who’s in charge. Right now that’s us—for a while at least. Our opponents are going to resort to car bombs and suicide attacks because they have no other way to win.

  —George Clooney on German TV, 2003

  Run for office? No. I’ve slept with too many women, I’ve done too many drugs, and I’ve been to too many parties.

  —Clooney on politics

  “No, I’
m gay gay. The third gay was pushing it.”

  —Clooney to Esquire magazine in April 2008 responding to a website claiming he was “gay, gay, gay.”

  HE’S THE BIGGEST STAR to grace the heavens, envied by men, adored by women. Heck, adored by men and slobbered over by women. He’s also a major political iconoclast, who cut his $20 million Ocean’s Eleven salary to $1 to star in, co-write, direct and produce the socially conscious, historically illiterate propaganda picture set in the McCarthy era, Good Night and Good Luck.

  Probably more than any adult man alive, George Clooney appears on “celebrity lists” popularized by the HBO series Entourage. This is when otherwise monogamous couples draw up lists of famous people who the couple agrees that, should the opportunity arise, the woman would be permitted to sleep with, no penalties to the relationship. On Entourage, star Adrian Grenier discovers to his dismay that the woman with whom he’d spent the night was about to get married, but had put him on her list—so sex was OK, but just that one time. Of course, if you want to trap Clooney for more than a few hours, you’d better be exceptionally selfless, politically liberal, uncommonly stunning and most of all, patient, because George has a chronic inability to settle down. This tendency was joked upon in New York’s Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, where a sculpture in Clooney’s likeness sits at a table offering a faux diamond ring to whoever sits opposite. How many tourists have had their pictures snapped in the fantasy pose of getting engaged to George Clooney?

  HIS CHRONIC SINGLEDOM has also led Clooney to battle persistent rumors that he is swinging for the boys’ team. Esquire magazine asked him in April 2008 about a Web site that asserts “George Clooney is gay, gay, gay.”