Imogen Lloyd Webber and Bernard McGuirk: Liz, Libya, and the Ludicrous Royal Wedding
Like most people of sound mind, Imogen Lloyd Webber, was saddened to learn about Elizabeth Taylor’s death yesterday. “She was a huge icon,” Imogen said. Bernard’s take on Taylor, however, was somewhat less hagiographic.
“She was a spoiled, pill-popping alcoholic who made a mockery out of marriage,” Bernard said, “with all due respect.” He also suggested Taylor was complicit in her friend Michael Jackson’s death. “What did he die from? Popping pills.”
Imogen finally cut Bernard off. “He’s quite wonderful,” she told Imus. “He starts off with ‘all due respect,’ and you know he’s going to go in for the jugular. And about someone who just died! So that’s lovely.”
But Bernard was immovable, claiming Taylor was no better in her day than Lindsay Lohan now. Though, as Webber observed, Lohan isn’t going to win an Oscar anytime soon.
Moving on to women who aren’t drug-addled messes, Imus wondered if, as Maureen Dowd wrote in her column yesterday, President Obama was pushed into war with Libya by the women of his administration—ladies like Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power—because he has no spine.
“Ah, the great female conspiracy,” Imogen sighed, and noted that regardless of how or why the President decided to act against Libya, it was a mistake. “Fools rush in in this region. We should have left the Arab League to do it—Libya is their next door neighbor.”
And besides, the West has never and will never, in her view, get it right in a region as tribal as Libya. Bernard, surprisingly, concurred with his sparring partner. Obama, he said, “capitulated to these war-mongering women…these chicken-hawk chicks.”
Kowtowing to the fairer gender is preferable to being an outright moron, which is what Britain’s Armed Forces Minister sounded like after he used a ridiculous analogy about a piece of string to imply he had no idea how long his country would be involved in Libya.
“He has basically come out and said, ‘We don’t have an exit strategy,’” Imogen said. “I’m sorry—you what?”
The real question, in Bernard’s opinion, should be, “How long is this idiot going to remain in office, and what is the diameter of his brain?”
But Bernard thinks Britain is using this military intervention to overcompensate for Scotland allowing the Lockerbie bomber to return to Libya a few years ago. “I don’t blame you for fleeing England because of this, and coming to America,” Bernard told Imogen. “Welcome!”
Of course, Imogen did not “flee” England, for that reason or any other. Nor should people in Tokyo, or California, or Colorado flee their homes because of radiation leaking from the Fukushima nuclear plant.
“Media, take a deep breath,” Imogen said. “We’re looking at a death toll or over 20,000 now in Japan. That’s the estimate from the earthquake and tsunami. Not one person has died because of radiation, yet.”
Besides, the radiation levels in Tokyo are the same as in Cornwall, England on any given day, because that city is built on radioactive granite. “We should be worrying about the people in Japan,” Imogen said, and again, Bernard was in total agreement.
“The media overhypes everything,” he said. “Y2K; swine flu was going to kill half of America; and the BP oil spill was going to be the end of the ecosystem in the Gulf. None of that happened.”
To escape from all this depressing news, Imogen turns to the upcoming nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton for entertainment. “It’s a little bit of indulgence,” she said. “It’s reading a novel. It’s having a lovely time.”
Bernard remains predictably skeptical. “The people of England can’t even get their teeth fixed or pay for college, and they have 14th century diamond-studded coaches?” he said, referring to Kate and William’s wedding day transportation mode.
Imogen spent a few seconds defending the royal family and their ability to generate tourism for England, but stopped. “Stay out of it,” she instructed Bernard. “It’s fine.”
Which sounds a lot more threatening in a British accent.
-Julie Kanfer
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