Well why not? Whittaker Chambers saw the light, as did James Burnham and David Horowitz. Why not Babs?
I’m officially inviting Barbra Streisand to the Anti-Communist Film Festival, which is happening this fall in Washington, D.C. One reason is that I believe in redemption. Even an octogenarian lefty like Barbra Streisand can see the light. Although ... probably not.
The other reason is that I’ve had a crush on Barbra Streisand since I was five years old.
God help me, I know it’s wrong. The Director of the Anti-Communist Film Festival arriving at the premiere with Barbra Streisand on his arm is a jolting image. Yet the heart doesn’t lie. My mother was a huge Barbra fan, and everything stopped in the house when Babs was on The Ed Sullivan Show. Mom used to bring me into the room whenever Baba was on TV. I was mesmerized. Maybe it had something to do with some correlation between black Irish beauties I was surrounded by growing up and the dark features of Jewish women. Conservative friends have tried to disabuse me of this madness.
The Way We Were, Funny Girl, What’s Up, Doc?, The Main Event, A Star is Born - I saw all her movies. I found myself becoming unreasonably jealous of Robert Redford in The Way We Were. During my punk phase in the 1980s I made room for Guilty, the album she made with Barry Gibb. I saw The Price of Tides and The Mirror Has Two Faces. (No, I’m not gay.)
In her memoir My Name is Barbra, Streisand goes down the list of ex-boyfriends, including Warren Beatty, Elliot Gould and Don Johnson. These are not soy boys, but real men who like real women. Whatever she has, it worked on other dudes also.
My Name is Barbra also, of course, contains a lot of political ranting. Trump is a liar, Newt Gingrich is the “enemy,” Bill Clinton is “smart and charismatic.” Streisand also defends celebrities who get involved in politics. "What is the artist's political role? Why does it make so many people angry when artists speak out?" she asks. Artists, Streisand observes, can serve as "a country's conscience.” Artists' work “gives us a reflection of the times, and sometimes they challenge us to see what others would prefer to ignore. They can give voice to the voiceless, by speaking up when no one else will," Streisand wrote. "That's why art is the enemy of tyrants and dictators," she said.
"I believe we all have not only the right,”she concludes, “but the responsibility to be politically active and to question authority.”
That is exactly the point of the Anti-Communist Film Festival.
Look, I get it. Streisand, 84, is too far along to change her politics. Her leftist stridency, a betrayal of her sharp intelligence, leads to cognitive dissonance, and pointing it out won’t budge someone who is that far inside the DNC cult. Yet let me try. At one point in My Name is Barbra, Streisand sees a doctor, who insists that she’s “a bitch.” His opinion is based entirely on fake news stories. “That’s the power of the printed word,” Barbra writes. “There was no hope of changing this man’s mind. He chose to believe some who had never met me…why couldn’t he believe the truth?” She concludes: “I have great respect for facts. The idea of just making something up bothers me.”
Me too, Babs. The media is dishonest. They lied about you being a bitch, they lied about me, they lie about everything. The politicians telling them to lie are also liars.
Perhaps this small crack, this tiny area of agreement about the media and their lies, can lead to the redemption of Barbra Streisand. If she doesn’t become MAGA, at least she will gain some skepticism about the Democrats.
See you at the festival, Funny Girl.
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