GEORGE CLOONEY & ABRAHAM LINCOLN: THE GREAT EMANCIPATORS

What could Gorgeous George and Honest Abe possibly have in common?

A whole lot, it seems.

These two native Kentuckians are magnificent oxymorons with a shared passion for the ladies AND for saving Africans from slavery and extinction.

Through field trips to Africa and by dazzling Congress with his star power, George is hoping to save millions of Sudanese in the Darfur region from sexual slavery and genocide by the Arab militia. This superstar is more than just a pretty face.

After serving as a wartime President during the bloodiest conflict on this nation’s soil, Lincoln emerged as the most reviled and most beloved leader ever. No one ever thought that the outcome of the Civil War would lead to abolishing slavery. Lincoln courageously put forth the Emancipation Proclamation and freed millions from slavery.

This superstar didn’t rely on his good looks. Lincoln had a face that scared trick or treaters. When accused of being two-faced by a senator, the seasoned politician wisecracked: “If I was two-faced, do you think I’d wear this one?” He was THAT secure.

George and Abe laugh at themselves before anyone else can. Both were blessed with cojones, and a certain irreverence for public derision. That’s the stuff from which legends are made.

Clooney’s a guy who can bed any gorgeous girl in the universe, yet lives with a 250-lb. pig. He’s THAT secure.

Actually the pig is his longtime pet. The committed bachelor breaks the hearts of legions of bodacious babes on a daily basis.

Homely Abe was always the ladies’ man before he settled down with Mary Todd, an emotional, sensuous bipolar babe from the Southern ruling class. As the Civil War raged, President Lincoln never paid any mind to the hate-spewing constituents who called his shopaholic wife & her Kentucky family: “The Confederate spies in the White House”. He was THAT secure.

George Clooney doesn’t pussyfoot around with political correctness either. When asked the soul-defining question: “Paper or plastic?”, he replied: “Do you want the truth or the politically correct version? The truth is I go plastic, it’s so much easier. And I like to put bags over my head at night when I sleep, which I think all kids at home should try. Kidding!!” He is THAT secure.

Lincoln admired Walt Whitman, the gay poet who had a major crush on him. The Commander-in-Chief loved the virile bard’s “Leaves of Grass” and had a deep admiration for this patriot. He was THAT secure.

The former rail-splitter and prairie lawyer also had the guts to defy 19th century convention. He had passionate, hot premarital sex with Mary and then married her. He was THAT secure.

For years, he slept in the same bed with his male law partner to save expenses during their time riding the country circuit. He was THAT secure.

Lincoln and George even have the acting profession in common.

After all, it was a famous actor who shot Lincoln at Ford’s Theater. John Wilkes Booth then leapt onto the stage and hammed it up one last time, shouting: “Sic semper tyrannis!” Death to the tyrant! The audience thought this high drama was part of the performance.

John Wilkes Booth admonition: “Beware of actors. They are to be seen, not to be known,” can NEVER be true of George. Unlike the scene-stealing Booth, George Clooney is an actor who has become an artistic and political force for good in the world.

The former tobacco picker, who also sold insurance door-to-door and acted as a driver for his aunt, famed ‘50s singer Rosemary Clooney, and who holds the record for failed sitcom pilots, proudly proclaimed at the Academy Awards:

“We (Hollywood) are the ones who talked about AIDS when it was just being whispered, and we talked about civil rights when it wasn’t really popular. This Academy gave Hattie McDaniel an Oscar in 1939 when blacks were still sitting in the backs of theaters. I’m proud to be part of this community.”

Their Kentucky roots gave both George and Lincoln a blue-collar work ethic and empathy that lasts a lifetime. They both faced rejection and adversity and instead of growing bitter, their humanity expanded.

Both found out first hand the wisdom in the blind and deaf Helen Keller’s advice:

“Persistence spells success.”

(c)2006, Sistarrs International

COURTNEY, WINONA, RIVER & ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.: "THEIR HIPPIE PARENTS SMOKED THEM"

Courtney Love, the rock widow from Spaceland. Winona Ryder, the adorable thespian kleptomaniac with a nasty prescription pill problem. River Phoenix, the shy vegan who loved PETA and heroin. Robert Downey, Jr., the junkie acting genius who chose state prison over Malibu.

What do they all have in common?

Hippie parents who screwed up their kids with their trip.

Brought up in hippie communes in Oregon, COURTNEY’s father allegedly gave her LSD when she was 4. Her mother then chose four awful husbands. No wonder a pissed off, acting out Courtney spent much of her adolescence in juvenile jails. She used a trust fund from her grandmother to run away to Europe and Asia as a teen. She began collecting rocker boyfriends and stripping in sleazy clubs. And thus commenced her drug addled trip through life and dicey behavior. An excellent, but not famous musician, she soared to Yoko Ono status when she married Kurt Cobain. She displayed her maternal instincts and level of judgment by continuing to shoot up heroin in the early months of her pregnancy.

WINONA’s parents were communal hippies and she grew up on a commune in Northern California, the goddaughter of LSD guru Timothy Leary. The ex-Harvard professor sounded the charge for the emerging drug culture: “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” One can only imagine the drug trips taken in the dirt poor commune. Winona lived on the isolated, rural property with no electricity or TV or a flush toilet. They say poverty leaves an indelible scar on the soul. No amount of money and fame can erase that insecurity. This might explain Winona’s shoplifting binge at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills. Her counter-culture icon godfather might explain the 37 prescriptions filled by 20 doctors, with Winona using 6 aliases, that were found in her purse by the arresting officers.

Courtney and Winona are best friends.

RIVER PHOENIX’s parents lived in hippie communes before joining the heinous Children of God cult. The missionary family lived in abject poverty, begging for money all across Latin America. River, his brother Joaquin and their other siblings sang and performed on street corners for food. The family were vegetarians, believing that eating animals was wrong. However, devouring children’s bodies and souls through a sexual initiation into the Children of God cult was not wrong. It was de rigueur. River said that he had intercourse at age 4. He continued sexual relations with other children until he was 10, when his parents left the cult to move to Hollywood. In his quest for an enlightened lifestyle, it is no mystery why River saw no paradox in eschewing meat and then injecting heroin.

The artsy fartsy, hippie parents of ROBERT DOWNEY, JR. didn’t do him any favors either. His underground director father gave Robert his first movie role at age 5 in his movie “Pound”. At age 7 dad gave him his first joint. Father & son reached a cannabis high together. How’s that for a heartwarming bonding experience? Dad later kicked a cocaine addiction, while Sean Penn kicked down Junior’s door to drag him onto a plane to a rehab clinic. If you look up “functioning addict” in the dictionary, you’ll probably see Robert Downey, Jr.’s picture. He maintained his stellar acting career, receiving an Oscar nomination for “Chaplin”, all the while dancing around the open grave of addiction. After countless court-ordered rehabs and many arrests for possession of heroin, crack, cocaine and marijuana, the judge finally decided on the ultimate Tough Love lesson. His Honor threw Junior’s ass into state prison. Even though Downey had three hit movies in theaters at the time, the inmates didn’t get the memo on star treatment and how to coddle a celebrity. They kicked Mr. Movie Star’s butt on the tier, in the yard and in the shower. He emerged from prison a year later, sober as a judge. NOT. He had yet another arrest months later. Recently, it appears he’s been zapped with real sobriety at long last. If forgiveness is the key to AA serenity, then it’s an odds on bet Robert Senior will be getting a mushy Father’s Day card this year.

Perhaps the hippest thing to do for your kids is to be an unhip parent.

(c)2006, Sistarrs International

ROSIE O’DONNELL & ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: FIRST GAY MOMS OF THE WORLD

FDR died in the arms of his mistress in Georgia while Eleanor smooched with her girlfriend in the White House.

By this time, a quarter century in politics had destroyed ALL of Eleanor’s five children. They suffered a triple whammy: failed multiple marriages, alcoholism and financial disasters. They blamed all their woes on her constant travel promoting the causes of civil rights and economic empowerment for the poor. Growing up, the kids felt abandoned by Eleanor for the causes and strangers she took to her bosom, something they NEVER experienced. It seems Eleanor could show love to the world, but not to her children.

The First Lady also had no problem sending some love to her lesbian paramour, AP reporter Lorena Hickok, who quit her job as White House correspondent to live in the White House with Eleanor. Before Lorena moved in, Eleanor sent her a mash note:

“My pictures are nearly all up and I have you in my sitting room where I can look at you most of my waking hours! I can’t kiss you so I kiss your picture good night and good morning… Most clearly I remember your eyes, with a kind of teasing smile in them, and the feeling of that soft spot just northeast of the corner of your mouth against my lips.”

The First Lady of the United States also shared a female lover with Marlene Dietrich: the globe trotting beauty Mercedes de Acosta. As Paula Froelich of “Page Six” would say: “You go, girls!”

Rosie O’Donnell is a polar opposite to Eleanor in her brand of parenting. Hollywood’s gay super mom is devoted to her kids first and foremost. Rosie gave up her movie career for a TV talk show to be close to and spend more time with her kids. The beloved star fearlessly and publicly married her love, Kelli Carpenter, in San Francisco. Shortly after, she quit her phenomenally successful talk show to be a full time parent to their 4 kids.

Rosie’s often said that, “Carol Brady was like a mother to me.” And her kids just might really turn out as happy and loved as the fictional Brady Bunch.

Eleanor Roosevelt never quite achieved this level of motherhood. But she did have a rough start in life. But so did Rosie, who didn’t have Teddy Roosevelt as an uncle nor a trust fund like Eleanor.

Rosie & Eleanor lost their mothers by the ages of 10 and 8 respectively. Both had emotionally distant dads. Eleanor’s father was a hopeless alcoholic who got committed to a mental institution and died there before her 10th birthday. Uncle Teddy, her father’s brother, loved her dearly but that didn’t save her from an unhappy and insecure childhood.

Rosie used the TV as a substitute mom. Eleanor looked to her teacher at an English boarding school for maternal interest. The young instructor gave her that and much more: an abiding interest in liberal causes and social justice. Lincoln once observed that, “Suffering examined can lead to great compassion.”

Eleanor & Rosie share a passion for civil rights, charity for all, and occasional bouts with depression. Dark clouds often plague those who lose a parent much too young. The empty space in one’s broken heart is never filled.

But these two certainly know that GIVING is love multiplied.

The patrician Eleanor did volunteer work with young immigrants, exposed harsh working conditions endured by women and children and tirelessly worked for civil rights for black Americans.

When Marian Anderson, the famed black opera singer got banned from performing in Constitution Hall, owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), because of her color, an indignant Eleanor swung into action. She quit the snobby, old establishment DAR, and arranged for the great diva to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a live audience of 70,000 and millions of radio listeners nationwide.

In her post White House years, she worked for the UN and fought long and hard to secure dignity and justice for all. Dubbed the First Lady of the World by Harry Truman, she earned the honor for her tireless travel to insure human rights in every corner of the world.

When she died in 1962 at age 78, she had attained secular sainthood. A commemorative cartoon simply showed two angels looking towards an opening in the clouds with the caption: “She’s here!”

Rosie’s no slouch either in her peripatetic social activism. She’s a fearless advocate of gay adoption. She “came out” about her sexuality to Diane Sawyer on “Primetime” solely to overturn negative feelings and state laws barring gays from adopting unwanted kids.

Marilyn Monroe might still be alive if she was brought up by two loving, encouraging gay adoptive parents instead of the heterosexual foster parents who abused her mentally, physically and sexually. They doomed her to a sad, self-destructive life.

“Gay” family values came through brilliantly on the recent HBO special: “Rosie O’Donnell’s Gay Family Cruise”. Love and encouragement and kindness are the ONLY FAMILY VALUES needed by kids. And no one should get an easy pass based on sexual orientation. It takes more than that!!

An interesting footnote on the gay cruise: the gay families totaled 1,500 people and then there were two straight, fat women. The chubby gals took the cruise so that, “We could wear our bathing suits and go in the pool in a judgment-free environment.” For shame, America.

Rosie’s charitable foundation For All Kids has raised $50 million to help kids and their families. She led the Million Mother March on the Capitol to draw attention to the need for gun control in America.

She took on the rich and powerful publishing world, and got herself in a heated battle to get out of “Rosie Magazine” because it didn’t reflect her values. After being threatened with financial ruin and standing her ground, it ended in a legal draw. She won.

When she finds the time, she takes on celebrities for their boorish behavior and penny-pinching ways. Like not opening their wall safes for a worthy charity like the 9/ll Relief Fund.

She’s never guilty of boring us for a second. We can’t wait to see and hear her in a new venue, Barbara Walter’s venerable TV talk show, “The View”.

Rosie, we’re with you a thousand percent in your fight for social justice. Now just go out there and cream Star Jones whenever you can!

(c)2006, Sistarrs International

AUDREY HEPBURN AND MARILYN MONROE: LOOKING FOR LOVE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

News flash!! Most young girls across America say Marilyn Monroe is their all-time hero. Elegant Audrey Hepburn comes in a distant second in the Screen Goddess Sweepstakes. We demand a recount. Let's take a closer look at both actresses.

Marilyn Monroe's horrendous beginning PARALYZED her right up to the end of her life. During her childhood, Marilyn endured the tyranny of her mother's mental illness. Unloved. Shuffled to many abusive foster homes. Stripped of her dignity and any shred of safety.

She dreamed of a fame that would bring her the love of millions. She got it, but it was no fairytale.

Gossip columnist Walter Winchell once wrote: "Hollywood is a place where they put you under contract instead of under observation." Well, that wasn't true for Marilyn.

Marilyn freely admitted she did the "Monica Lewinsky" for years with agents, producers, studio moguls and a cast of thousands, before landing a coveted studio contract. Finally, she signed with 20th Century Fox and wearily declared: "That's the last time I'll ever be on my knees!"

She got her studio contract AND was placed under observation many times, in many psychiatric clinics. An alphabet soup of mental maladies plagued her. Depression. Suicidal tendencies. Alcoholism. Drug addiction. Sex addiction. Instead of a handshake, a simple thank you, or a kiss on the cheek, Marilyn had sex with you.

As a fully grown sex symbol, Marilyn Monroe inflicted the tyranny of her mental illness on co-stars and directors. Her insecurities, fueled by sleeping pills and booze, led to hopeless depression and legendary bad behavior. Lateness to the set or a no-show. Flubbed lines. Millions of studio dollars lost.

The movies made her a celluloid idol, but left many battlefield casualties. Cast and crew always suffered from Marilyn fatigue in all its ugly incarnations.

Poor Marilyn. The star didn't even live like a movie queen. Her personal hygiene was woefully lacking. She rarely bathed. She never owned a home until months before her death at age 36. The screen goddess apparently washed down dozens of sleeping pills with a magnum of champagne. Found disheveled and nude in the middle of her bedroom floor on a bare mattress, the room was a squalid mess.

No one who personally knew Marilyn registered surprise at her early demise.

Marilyn Monroe's last words were to an actor friend, Peter Lawford: "Please say goodbye to...", aka a serial cheater, married lover who dumped her months before and passed her on to his brother. The lover happened to be the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Thus began speculation that she was murdered with Nembutal suppositories to silence any blabbing to the press.

Sadly, it seems Marilyn's magic was only on the screen.

While Marilyn's bleak childhood paralyzed her, Audrey Hepburn's early tragedies GALVANIZED her, and she grew up to become an extraordinary human being.

Audrey sprinkled her magic everywhere, everyday of her life. Everyone always fell in love with her and admired her forever.

Audrey Hepburn came of age during the bloody Nazi occupation of Holland. Stripped of its dignity and any shred of safety, her homeland sank into despair. Though born to a Dutch baroness, Audrey's family suffered the same fate as the commoners.

While a Jewish teenager named Anne Frank hid in an Amsterdam attic writing the dairy that would one day inspire the world, 15-year old Audrey joined the Dutch Resistance.

She carried secret messages in her ballet slippers, knowing that if caught, the Nazis would shoot her. That took a lot of guts, especially since the Gestapo executed her two favorite uncles months before for similar heroics.

Food became a distant memory for Audrey. Forced starvation, not anorexia, made the future fashion original skeletal. The young girl stayed alive by eating tulip bulbs. Her metabolism changed, stomach problems began and her weight remained at 110 pounds for the rest of her life.

Being born into the European aristocracy is not what gave Audrey Hepburn a fairytale life. Her banker father deserted the family. The warm and sensitive Audrey endured a cold and distant mother, who was now forced to take in work as a seamstress. Ironically, Marilyn's mother worked as a studio seamstress.

Even after Audrey's triumphs on the stage and in the movies, her shrewish mother told her: "Considering that you have no talent, it's really extraordinary where you've gotten."

Still, the saintly actress harbored no malice, ever. She took care of both parents until their deaths.

In a twist of fate, Audrey's most cherished role as Holly Golightly in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" was written by the book's author, Truman Capote, with Marilyn Monroe in mind for the film role.

But Audrey's easy charm and inimitable fashion sense, abetted by French designer Givenchy, won the day. The actress ended up with an Oscar nomination and also sang the Oscar-winning song, "Moon River". Today, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" is an icon in the vault of stylish cinema.

Audrey often said: "I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it." She fulfilled these needs with her sons, her circle of friends, and with those suffering all over the globe.

Twenty years before Angelina Jolie signed up with the United Nations, Audrey began her charity work with its UNICEF branch. She just had to pay back for the life-saving help she got from the Red Cross as a teen in war torn Europe.

Audrey Hepburn eased the suffering of countless children throughout Africa, Asia, and South America with her relentless perseverance and tireless UN relief trips.

"I'm glad I've got a name and I'm using it for all its worth. It's a bonus that my career gave me," she said right before leaving for her final trip in 1993 to famine-struck Somalia. She worked long and hard under grueling conditions to help save the African children and their families from certain extinction.

On her return home, doctors made a shocking discovery. Audrey had only three months left.

Her son Sean Ferrer recalled that, "Even on the day she died, her very last thoughts were with the children. She wanted to know if there were any messages about the children in Somalia. Mommy believed in love. She left us with peace."

Yes, we all will make the decision at some point in our lives to be paralyzed or galvanized by the dark shadows of our past. Choose to walk in the sunshine.

Be a hero, like Audrey Hepburn.

(c)2006, Sistarrs International