Now that's bravery – if a camera set up ever showed her nose to its worst advantage this was it.

Love Babs but she butchered "Jingle Bells" I hope she scrubbed after smooching 'W.' BTW – Her son-in-law, Josh Brolin has a much hotter ASS.

Mucho thanks for something new even if I can’t get the clip to open. But you were a little dyke er tyke when THIS one-minute-incredible-next-minute-execrable album came out? Oh, ma chere, c'est explains SO much! Now if you’d said, “Her wristslashing performance of ‘With One Look’ made me gay,” well, then….

http://www.lala.com/#search/streisand%20look

It’s so passionate, I was convinced she was hoping to be invited to do “Sunset Boulevard” on stage or screen. Alas…..

Sad, too, that her choice of material after the first five or so PERFECT albums [still a MUST buy for anyone who cares about actual music] got generally weaker and weaker even as her atomic voice held out. And St. Judy knows her always quirky personality seemed to turn quacky, and her inner Brooklyn demons seemed to win the wrestling match with her innate class. And, then there’s the fact that a crazy rich, certified liberal and entertainment ICON who is also the mother of a gay son would have eagerly done much, MUCH more to help out in our many battles, including, yes, Prop H8TE. And, no, a small, private $$$ VIP dinner was NOT enough.

There’s tons of great YouTube clips from her first couple of decades to explore that give a taste of the magic experienced at NYC’s The Lion when, totally unknown, she won their talent contest at 18, and made its gay patrons think they’d died and gone to heaven. Most would.

Leland’s friend at ’94 BS concert: “Where are all the gays?”
Leland: “Gone.”

Two samples, the first from her 1965 TV special [on DVD—put it in someone’s stocking for Xmas when she was only 23 and still performing on Broadway in “Funny Girl”]. The second, from its movie version three years later.

youtube.com/watch?v=AIqCCnalIG0&feature=related

youtube.com/watch?v=Hdlz6QzyAVA&feature=related

I add this one, the most brilliantly edited YouTube video I’ve ever seen, because it contains dozens of images spanning her many looks from purposely silly to untouchably elegant, as well as, at the end, demonstrating her lung capacity which caused Donna Summer to literally faint while they were recording a duet.
.youtube.com/watch?v=x64qiFS_D0I

Finally, a young fan of both Babs and ATW’s “Nuke” brought gay generations far apart together below. The men at The Lion would have been so proud.

youtube.com/watch?v=laMR3DIOYis

I love when she goes "YES WE DO!" out of nowhere. Love her.

How did I miss these "Culture Club reinventions" of which you speak?

I was made gay by her Second Album (such an original title), but it was already old by then, so I am NOT old. Yeah.

Thanks for all the links, Leland.

I have a friend who's obsessed with Britney Spears, and I just want to roll my eyes every time he mentions her, but then I realized that I had my walls completely covered with Barbra stuff for quite a few years, and that no one understood me, either.

Coke, I understand your former obsession because Barbra, for all of her issues, has actual talent; whereas Britney is very pretty.

I did wonder too where Barbra was during the prop 8 vote and its aftermath–especially with her having a gay son.

Her website had lots about Obama's victory but NOTHING about prop 8. I think that probably says more about her true feelings about the gay community than anything she would ever actually say.