Oh Good Lord, Babs Is At It Again
Thursday, October 5th, 2006Singer and liberal political activist Barbra Streisand can’t seem to do anything these days without blaming all of the world’s problems on President Bush:
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Barbra Streisand opened her first U.S. tour in 12 years on Wednesday with a show that ridiculed her political nemesis, President George W. Bush.
Before a capacity crowd of some 16,000 people at South Philadelphia’s Wachovia Center, Streisand gave assured renditions of standards from her long career as a singer and actress including “Funny Girl,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “Love Soft as an Easy Chair,” and “Somewhere.”
The show also featured a skit where an actor playing Bush uttered such lines as, “I’m concerned about the national debt, so I’m selling Canada,” and “If I cared about the polls I would have run for president of Poland.”
Streisand, 64, a longtime liberal activist, said she was coming out of retirement to raise money for her foundation, which supports a range of causes related to the environment, education, health care and other issues.
Now, I don’t have a problem with Babs going on tour and singing her songs; she’s actually a pretty good singer. It’s just that she can’t seem to separate her professional life from her personal life.
Her inability to keep her politics out of her performances is one of the reasons I despise her. Take this tour, for instance. I’ll bet that not one of her tour posters or commercials states that if you go to her concert, you will be subjected to partisan skits which take swipes at political enemies. Now, ticket prices for these shows are ranging from $100 to $750 per seat, and pardon me for venting, but if I’m paying anyone that much money to hear them sing, I want to hear them sing, not give me a political lecture.
Now, a lot of you are probably saying, “Well, Nick, everybody knows that if you go see Barbra Streisand in concert you’re going to get a political lecture at some point.” True enough, but the least she could do is advertise the fact, especially when she’s picking your pocket for $750 per seat. I mean, if you’re a big Streisand fan and shell out $1,500 buck for you and your wife to go hear her sing all of her famous hits, and instead you get to sit there and watch some lame political skit, aren’t you going to be even a little pissed off? She probably could have fit in at least another two or three songs if she had got rid of the skit, right?
Babs is by no means the only celebrity who has gotten caught up in listening to themselves ramble on and on during their performances. Both Linda Ronstadt and Whoopi Goldberg have felt the wrath of their employers and/or audiences when they couldn’t just shut up and sing. Celebrities just seem to think that because they have a microphone in their hands that everyone wants to know what they think about everything. Frankly, I can’t remember the last time I saw Whoopi Goldberg doing a comedy routine and thinking, “Boy, I wonder what she thinks about American Foreign Policy?” I bet you can’t either.
So, celebrities, remember this: If you want to go on and on about how much you hate the President or how much you hate the War in Iraq, fine. Just please tell us that you’re going to do it before we shell out our hard earned cash to see you do something else entirely. The last time I checked, bait and switch was considered fraud.
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