Whoopi or Not Whoopi?
Posted by Moonage on 26 Jul 2004 | Tagged as: People
A few days ago John Kerry held a fundraiser with the social darlings of Hollywood. Being what they are, they all tried to one-up each other being the most obnoxious ( because they can ). Apparently Whoopi Goldberg won the competition by comparing George W. Bush to her genitalia. Pretty gross comparison of anything if you ask me. Immediately after her performance, Slim-Fast, one of her sponsors, canned her. Apparently as grossed out as I was. Very shortly afterwards Arnold Schwartzeneggar, governor of California ( yes, the very same state ), called state legislators opposing a bill of his “girlie-men”. Not to be topped, Linda Rondstadt ( former girlfirend of a former governor of, you guessed it, California ), topped the other two by praising the movie Fahrenheidt 911, a very crass movie criticizing President Bush. She was run off stage as people through stuff at her, people demanded their money refunded, and Aladdin Casino promptly dumped her.
There was a furor on the Motley Fool bulletin board over Whoopi getting fired, basically implying that freedom of speech was being trampled by right-wingers. I asked, only to be ignored, why it would be right-wingers when Arnold took heat as well, and he is one of them? Won’t get an answer for that. But, it did make me think why Whoopi’s bush was more important than Arnold’s “girlie-men”, and definitely got more play than Linda’s beating her drum. Whoopi and Linda lost income over it, Arnold just got a little heat, but since most people recognized it for what it was ( “girlie-men”, if you didn’t follow the link, was a satire of Arnold ), it didn’t carry quite the punch I guess. So, that just narrows it to Whoopi and Linda. Two women spoke their minds, both said rather loaded things, one is all over the media, one was barely mentioned. The simple cop-out answer would be because Whoopi is black and Linda is not. That’s not the way I look at things tho. The NAACP didn’t rush to Whoopi’s defense on this, which struck me as odd. I really think because of her name, and the way she approaches things, Whoopi’s not “black enough” to merit sympathy from the NAACP. OK, that leaves it a woman-woman thing. About the only angle I can make of it now is that Linda has a history of being radical, and saying radical things, and Whoopi has sold her career on being a sort of middle of the road type performer. That is what Slim-Fast bought into, and Whoopi shattered that image by saying what she did, while Linda just upset her crowd.
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