From Nick Denton’s LA gossip blog, Defamer:
Uh-oh. Barbra Streisand—referred to among the elite Democratic core as the Black Buttah Widow for the way her endorsements mean the certain kiss of death—will perform at an Obama fundraiser at the ballroom of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on September 16. This is a room that holds only 700 people, so attendees will be expected to pony up for the privilege. From Variety.com:
Obama will start the evening with a 5 p.m. dinner event for about 250 people at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, the historic estate once owned by the legendary Doheny family. Tickets for the event are $28,500.
Later, he will attend a reception at the Beverly Wilshire, followed by Streisand’s special performance. Tickets for the event are $2,500 per person.
Co-hosts for event include the DreamWorks team of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, as well as political consultant Andy Spahn. It’s also being organized with Obama’s Southern California finance team.
Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen, too? Why don’t they just wheel out a coffin that says “OBAMA 08” and drive a symbolic last nail into it with one of Sarah Palin’s spare seal clubs? And speaking of the VP candidate, Streisand has weighed in on her website with an essay on the Brooke Hogan-radar-evader, entitled, “McCain Doesn’t Get It: Women are not that stupid.” It’s a lot more enjoyable a read if you set it to the tune of “The Way We Were.”
There is something I do not understand about Streisand. I do not think I have met anyone who owned a recording of hers for 30 years, nor can I remember a movie she has been in for the same amount of time.
What is her drawing power and why is she considered a star? Has anyone actually bought a Streisand recording this century. Please help me out on these pressing questions.
I have been pondering them for decades to no avail.
TOC –
Well, let me do some re-faming.
Her early 70s comedies with Ryan O’Neal are not bad. Compared to Madonna, she’s a film genius. The Way We Were is not a bad film, because compared to Robert Redford, Streisand is an acting genius. (Then she started making her own film epics and completely disappeared up her own gastro-intestinal tract, but she didn’t always suck.)
As a lounge singer, which is basically what she is, Streisand is not bad. That’s not saying much, because lounge singers as a class deserve to be savagely beaten by a drunken bowling team, but it’s a matter of taste.
She invented the “Streisand Effect,”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect which recently demolished John Edwards – remember him?
Karl Rove’s mind control device is at work again. He is making leftists do things to ensure they don’t get into power.
_As a lounge singer, which is basically what she is, Streisand is not bad. That’s not saying much, because lounge singers as a class deserve to be savagely beaten by a drunken bowling team, but it’s a matter of taste._
Too funny – made my day!!
*Karl Rove’s mind control device is at work again. He is making leftists do things to ensure they don’t get into power*
I’ll let you in on the secret: mild encouragement, some blatant dissing, and then quiet restraint is all that’s necessary to set off the self-demolition sequence. It’s a feature, not a bug.
“Because If You Read This Site, You Probably Don’t Read Defamer”
Doesn’t this post title alone essentially declare that readers of AL’s writings are the polar opposite of the leftists that support Obama? Isn’t that a problem for anyone who wishes to support Obama, yet does not approve of the tactics of his supporters?
#2 from Glen Wishard at 3:41 am on Sep 09, 2008
Thanks for the effort Glenn, but now I am even more confused.
BTW, you shouldn’t be so hard on (no pun intended)Madonna. At least she trys to have some sex appeal.
She’s got a large pull to middle-aged women. I think my mom used to be a big Barabara Streisand follower. Not sure if she is anymore. Has a big relationship to older hollywood players (like Speilberg) that still pull alot of Hollywood strings by producing movies.
GK< no Defamer is a pretty funny gossip blog on goings-on among the celebutards here in LA. Worth reading if you live here... A.L.
Gossip?
Spielberg’s been working on a “Lincoln movie”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443272/ based upon the Doris Kearns Goodwin book. The initial script, focused, like the book, on the cabinet was rejected for lacking sufficient interest.
Spielberg summoned his historians to meet on an alternate approach. He asked about a movie focused on the personal relationship between Lincoln and Frederick Douglas, but the historians said they really didn’t meet enough to supply dramatic effect. Then another historian pitched a movie that would give his wife Mary a prominent role in the events. Spielberg seemed interested at first, but another historian stood up and explained that Mary was described as a manipulative hellcat by Lincoln supporters, their marriage is usually not described in glowing terms, and that she had embarrassed the administration by extravagant expenditures.
Spielberg was silent for a moment and then said, we are not going to put out a movie about an unpopular First Lady in 2008 when another First Lady will be running for President.
I wonder how many “small donors” it would take to contribute these kinds of bucks.