From the ‘Snarky-With-An-‘S” File: the Chicago Sun-Times (12/12), reviewing the Bette Midler concert at the United Center, liked Midler’s rendition of the ’60s hit ‘Chapel of Love’ with videos of famous defunct couples, especially Liza Minnelli and David Gest (in Bette’s words, ‘Liza with an ex’).
From pop culture to high culture: The New York Times Book Review section (12/7), writing on The Unexpurgated Beaton: the Cecil Beaton Diaries as He Wrote Them 1970-1980, headlined the review as ‘I Could Have Dished All Night.’ The highly homosexual Beaton, photographer to high society in Great Britain, et al., was a rara avis in his own right: he bought suits a size too small to appear sleaker; speaking of John Gielgud at a party he said, ‘John contorted his face and looked like an oyster squirted with lemon’; and then his send-up of the queen mum, who’d been asked by a hostess to say something complimentary to the kitchen staff, coming up with, ‘How lovely to be a cook.’ He knew ’em all, photographed ’em all, and viciously sliced ’em all.
Speaking of slicing folks, gaydom’s own Gore Vidal has written Inventing a Nation as reviewed in The NY Times (11/27). He tells of Washington, Jefferson and Adams with some affection and a few knife thrusts. He compares Adams’s Alien and Sedition Acts to John Ashcroft’s present law, the Patriot Act. He goes on with other quotes from the founders which seem particularly prescient today.