Thursday, July 20, 2006

Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte

Doris Day, the actress and singer, has spent much of her professional life trying to convince the world that she is really not the girl next door. Some of us were prepared to believe her a long time ago.

Others are wasting little time.

Charlotte Church is the young girl from Wales who achieved international acclaim in her tender years for possessing "the voice of an angel." In a pre-recorded pilot for a new television program bearing her name, her image is taking a decidedly different turn: "During the show, the hostess Charlotte Church, dressed as drug-using nun, smashed open a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary revealing a hidden can of cider, and spoke about worshipping 'St Fortified Wine.' Along the same vein of comic blasphemy, the pop diva pretended to hallucinate while consuming communion wafers branded with Ecstasy smiley faces, and denigrated Pope Benedict XVI as a 'Nazi,' even though she had performed for the late Holy Father, John Paul II, when she was a 12 year-old girl."

Ignatius Press, which holds the English-language rights to most of the writings of the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, wasted even less time, in announcing that it is discontinuing sales and distribution of all products featuring "the pop diva" in question.

Not a moment too soon. A search of the video archive YouTube features a black-and-white musical piece of CC, behaving according to one commenter as a "lindsay lohan wanna' be." A segment of ITV's Entertainment Now gives the lowdown, culminating in her belting out the phrase: "I need professional hel-l-l-l-l-l-p!"

Who can argue with reasoning like that?

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