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Kathy Michaels

By Kathy Michaels

Upon learning Barbara Walters was saying sayonara to her Oscar special I let out a guilty squeak of glee.

Guilty, because a more appropriate response on the eve of International Women’s Day may have been to acknowledge the breadth of Walters’ work. She’s done a lot more than just monetize the tears of Hollywood stars while whetting the appetites of gossip hounds, after all.

But following last night’s show, not to mention years of being subjected to the nattering hens on The View, an homage to Babwa Wawa’s  more legitimate feats couldn’t be mustered. Last night she delivered the death knell to her legitimacy as a news source while simultaneously destroying my beloved  pastime of soaking up Hollywood gossip, and I don’t think there’s enough time for the old bird to redeem herself.

In her final post Academy Award show, she let the world learn that Precious star Mo’Nique is in an open marriage and worse yet, she doesn’t shave her legs.

The words should have been scandalous and sickening enough on their own, but the camera-operator clearly didn’t agree. They decided to go in for a close up of the Oscar winner’s gams as she smoothed her hairs into place. I let out a sigh of relief when I learned there was no photographic evidence of the open marriage — though, it seems to me Sasquatch stems are more of a fidelity insurance policy than a sign of an open marriage, but I digress.

Basically, there will be no memories of glamour and movie-making excellence from this round of Oscar awards. I won’t remember the movie Precious, but the unpleasant revelation that a comedian-turned-serious-actress doesn’t shave her legs will be forever seared in my memory as a  creepy new low in Hollywood muckraking and personal grooming.

Crimes against good taste aside, Walters has  always been an unusual case. She’s interviewed some of the most frightening and powerful figures on the globe, but strangely those peaks in news delivery were overshadowed by her aptitude for gossipmongering.

Until recently, piercing questions to the likes of Michelle Pfeiffer, like “do you know you’re beautiful?” have kept the masses rapt. Since the dawn of perezhilton, however,  bloggers have taken her star-gazing lead and run to tabloid hell with it.  The evolution of that stream of news has turned her into the boring great grandmother of Hollywood smut. Perhaps it was a vain attempt to shake up controversy that leg hair became the topic of an international broadcast, but from the woman who once set the bar for others to follow it was an unpleasant fall from grace.

Now, as every article about a celebrity bowel movement and follicle issue comes up for discussion — already filling hours of television programming, millions of web pages and fuelling the profit margins of a magazine industry that’s generally made me lose my faith in humankind— a nod should be made to  Wawa.

It’s not the legacy she should have left, but more importantly I’m not enjoying the impact her actions have had on my world view which is decidedly less pop-culture oriented.

Until last night I’d happily admit that a frothy feature about whether or not Britney Spears is off her nut, or Whitney Houston is back to being whack was what was keeping my attention.  But hairy legs? Please.

So, step aside Wawa, you’ve done your damage. I’m going to the library to pick up a scientific journal and recycle my smut rags. Sigh.

kathy@kelowna.com

Tags: Academy Awards, Barbara Walters, Mo'Nique, Oscars

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 11:49 am and is filed under Kathy Michaels. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.