Posts Tagged ‘Barbra Streisand’

Charles Winecoff

Boo-Hoo: Gays’ Lachrymose Last Resort in the War Against Mormons

by Charles Winecoff

There are more histrionics on display in the two-minute trailer (see below)for the pro-gay-marriage ”documentary,” 8: The Mormon Proposition, than in all the episodes of Oprah I can remember seeing.

A blonde woman, tears running down her face, looks into the camera and pleads, “Why did the Mormons do this to us?”

In a crowd of what I presume are gay activists (and not film goers), a young man sobs so hard that he has to be comforted by a female friend.


A bulldyke (I’m guessing) stares out at the viewer, her despondent face sopping wet.

And one of the stars of the film, a pretty gay boy (and ex-Mormon) named Tyler Barrick – who seems have been inspired by Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born – clings to his husband and bawls, “I can’t believe that people could hate us this much!” Really?  I can. (more…)

Charles Winecoff

The Streisand Effect – or People Who Don’t Need People

by Charles Winecoff

I have a confession to make: when I’m alone in my car – or in iPod isolation – I sometimes listen to Barbra Streisand.  And I’m neither a big fan of pop music nor of the current state of liberalism – the cushy, comfy, groupthink kind with which Streisand has become closely linked in recent years.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Whenever I’m feeling a little down, Streisand’s rousing, patriotic rendition of “Before the Parade Passes By” (from the Hello, Dolly! soundtrack) is the next best thing to shooting up a Diet Rockstar.  The movie may be deadly, but that track is classic Barbra: starts out quiet, plaintive, then slowly builds to an almost militaristic crescendo of chorus, trumpets, beating drums – and Babs, screaming her head off above it all with a heroic, never-ending high note that sounds like a war cry.

I know - that’s so gay.  But for me, the song is musical comfort food – and proof of the power of the human spirit: a rusty Main Street USA antique, shined up and brought back to life by a disadvantaged ugly duckling from Brooklyn, with a voice straight from God, who beat the odds.  That’s when Streisand was still one of a kind.

But that was 1969.  This is now.  Today, “Before the Parade Passes By” would probably be called something like “Whenever the Trans-Cultural Community Gathering Happens to Reconvene.”  And it would probably be sung by Sheryl Crow. (more…)

Charles Winecoff

Confessions of a Recovering Anti-Semite

by Charles Winecoff

Whenever someone asks me if I’m religious, I always say I’m Jewish by osmosis.  Back in Manhattan, my mother was known to order in Chinese food seven nights a week - even for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner.  For an Anglo-centric WASP worshipper who idolized Jackie O, she was very Mama Rose.

But there was always that awkward moment when she had to give the Chinese restaurant our name over the phone: “Winecoff.  W-I-N-E-C-O-F-F.  And it’s not Jewish.”


Orson Welles “The Stranger”

People usually just assumed we were Jewish.  Sometimes they even refused to believe it when we said we weren’t – “Oh, come on.  You’re kidding, right?” – which made me mad.  But this was New York City, and we were surrounded, outnumbered.

We were supposed to be Episcopalian – or as my mom occasionally put it, Protestant.  I had no idea what that meant.  We never “protested” anything.  We never took communion at the landmark church we went to now and then.  My mother, who was really more of a frustrated pagan, thought the symbolic eating the body/drinking the blood of Christ was akin to cannibalism. (more…)

Charles Winecoff

Whoops! How Hollywood Made Hippie the New Redneck

by Charles Winecoff

The good people of Hollywood often seem compelled to justify their every move - like dinner with a new couple down the street or a weekend out-of-state – with a reassuring “they’re very liberal” or “it’s a very liberal town.”  You know, just in case there’s any doubt.

Meanwhile, send them a picture postcard from, say, Texas, and you’ll get a begrudging, very un-liberal, “Better you than me” response.  These brave torch-bearers of tolerance rarely hesitate to wish the worst on ”red” states – turning Biblical on a dime with curses of hurricanes, fires, floods - as if real human beings didn’t live anywhere besides Los Angeles and New York.  It’s alway payback time.

To understand this dogged, help-we’re-surrounded-by-foes mindset (that only applies to fellow Americans they’ve never met), one needs to look back about 30 years – to that golden age of violence and paranoia: the 1970s.  The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Straw Dogs, The Wicker Man, Deliverance, and The Hills Have Eyes were just a few of the message movies that taught an entire generation one very important rule: don’t leave the city! (more…)