What Did You Expect?

I like Taylor Swift a whole great big lot. Not that she needs my approval, but I think she is charming, cute, talented, and she certainly seems pleasant and amiable, without all the "I'm famous" conceit that I can't stand in famous people. She is also quite the songwriter, and from what I can see, a lot of young women agree on that point and feel that she writes from their emotional standpoint.

Stevie Nicks has been a singer for a long time, and she is in Peggy's Top 5 for sure. Very popular with Peggy, is Stevie.

The other night on the Grammy Awards show, those two sang duets of each other's songs, and all week long I read in the paper and all over the "internets" that one or both of them hit flat notes during the performance.

Crappy Australian "actor" Mel Gibson (photo not available), who shows no respect for his wife, marriage, people of faiths other than his own, the honor of the police, or just about anything worthwhile, just had another movie come out to stinko reviews and non-boffo box office. In order to bolster his sagging public image and put some customers in theatre seats, his handlers arranged for him to do those remote interviews where the "star" sits in front of a camera and is interviewed by journalists lucky enough to be elsewhere. Gibson got into a tussle with a reporter of the Jewish faith over aid to Israel, as if that had anything to do with his movie, and called another reporter, on WGN TV, an "@$$hole." During a live interview.

That's nice, Mel.

Two different situations here, both with a show-biz background, but really, who's surprised? First of all, Gibson, under arrest for DUI in 2006, went on an anti-Semitic rampage while in custody, pausing only in his tirade to coin a filthy nickname for a female police. He hasn't been in a movie since 2002, and given the lackluster business for this new flopola, it's a safe bet that you'll see him guesting on "Fringe" or "Beverly Hills 90210" pretty soon. I'm fairly certain that I can go the rest of my life without needing to see his 1/2-cocked hammy acting on any screen of any size.

Ms Swift, I am crazy about your songs, but you'd probably concur that you aren't exactly Karen Carpenter when it comes to tone and pitch control. However, you are a better singer than the carpenter who will build your $20 million house sometime soon, so don't fret about being a touch off key. It certainly hasn't hurt your partner of the other evening, Ms Nicks, whose appeal, as far as I could see, had a lot more to do with her attitude, her swirling skirts and drapy scarves and clattery tambourine than sounding perfectly tonal.

But - what do we expect? To put Taylor 'n' Stevie up on the stage, and you expect, what, two operatic divas? To allow a loose cannon like this Gibson behind the wheel of a car or a live microphone, and expect genteel behavior?