Is Streisand on Crack?

My good friends know that there are few things on the planet I enjoy more than seeing Barbra Streisand, a.k.a. the world's most overrated entertainer, get mocked. And when one of my favorite writers, Jonah Goldberg, takes some time out to mock her, it's like a belated Christmas gift... or whatever holiday I'm supposed to celebrate in our multicultural world. Here's an excerpt that had me cracking up...

Chanukah came early for the Goldberg household last month. On November 23, Barbra Streisand wrote a letter to the editor complaining that the Los Angeles Times picked me up as a columnist. As gleeful as I was, I declined to respond. But now, just last night, Ms. Streisand chose to post to her website the "director's cut" of her original letter to the editor, which apparently had been edited for space and, no doubt, for content by the LA Times. I could resist no longer.

As Streisand surely surmises, we in the warmonger and puppy-kicker community take it as a great badge of honor to be singled out for obloquy by the likes of her. Short of convincing Alec Baldwin to actually make good on his promise to flee the country, vexing the Dashboard Saint of Hollywood Liberalism is about as good as it gets. That my name is such wolf's bane (or Yentl's bane) to her that she must cancel her subscription to the Los Angeles Times is just gravy. Feel free to post pictures of me around your homes if you fear she may be coming through your town.

Streisand's real complaint is that the Times will no longer carry Robert Scheer's column. She's simply wrong on the facts that my column replaced his. I'm part of a bundle which results, I believe, in a net gain of liberal voices. But that Scheer is out and I'm in is a great injustice in her eyes.

...I am delighted to be in the Los Angeles Times and I'm deeply flattered by the opportunity. I would be saddened if Streisand were right in her claim that my presence will hurt the paper or if her insinuation that she somehow speaks for the larger community were true.

But Streisand is adamant. She writes, "The greater Southern California community is one that not only proudly embraces its diversity, but demands it. Your decision to fire Robert Scheer is a great disservice to the spirit of our community."

She continues: "It seems that your new leadership, especially Publisher Jeff Johnson, is entirely out of touch with your readers and their desire to be exposed to views that stretch them beyond their own paradigms. So although the number of contributors to your Op-Ed pages may have increased, in firing Scheer and hiring columnists such as Jonah Goldberg, the gamut of voices has undeniably been diluted."

...So, taking Streisand seriously, we must ask: Is she on crack?

Robert Scheer may be the greatest writer since homo sapiens first scribbled on cave walls, but no serious person can believe that his views test the elasticity of Streisand's "paradigms." He reinforces them, he ladles concrete on them. Scheer confirms all of her biases and reaffirms all of her ill-considered views. Put aside the fact that both Scheer and Streisand are committed leftists who share almost identical views on most major issues. Scheer served as an informal adviser to Ms. Streisand on at least one occasion — when she delivered a speech to Harvard. Streisand, who recently called for President Bush's impeachment, threw a book party for Scheer when his last anti-Bush book came out, and she regularly links to his articles on her always amusing website.

And even if you suspect I don't have the intellectual firepower to burn toast, it's hard to see how my views wouldn't put just a bit of spring in her paradigm. Indeed, it's doubtful that Scheer would even take the time to tell her that "gamuts" cannot be "diluted" or that if you are going to pronounce upon "principals of journalistic integrity" with Olympian pomposity, you might take an extra moment or two to spell "principles" correctly. Otherwise, when she writes that the Times is stepping away "from the principals of journalistic integrity, which would dictate that journalists be journalists, editors be editors and accountants be accountants" it sounds like she's saying we should back away slowly from the dean of the Columbia Journalism School and other journalistic "dictators." "Have that accountant beaten! He's acting like an editor!"

Beyond mocking Streisand, Goldberg also gave me an opportunity to write one of my favortie headlines ever on the blog. He may have even exposed a fundamental truth. I've often wondered if Babs is on crack; to be fair, I've also wondered if the people who pay exorbitant sums for tickets to her concert are also on crack. Or maybe that's the explanation -- the concerts are giant festivals where everyone gets together and smokes crack. No wonder they come out raving about Babs.