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My favorite part is where Karen acts like she’s going to throw the Grammy up in the air.
I wasn't aware that Midler ever made fun of Karen's anorexia. Do you have something more to back up that claim? The parenthetical comment in the link is an addition by the editor, not Midler's words. Whoever wrote that little piece was apparently assuming Midler's jokes were about the anorexia, but I sure never heard Midler comment on that. [SNIP]
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Thanks for the clarifications and supporting evidence. Weird, though. I don't recall a single Midler joke based on Karen's illness -- she definitely took shots at the goody-four-shoes image, but the anorexia? Well, if she admits that she did, must have happened, but...huh. Ah well. There are happier topics to dwell on. You're right, Karen looks great in this clip and handles herself well. I wonder if the soft speaking voice wasn't a conscious attempt to try to sound feminine, if that makes any sense.
I'm with the last two posters. I don't think Midler ever referred to Karen's anorexia when she was poking fun at her (in contrast to Joan Rivers). In an arcticle that Paul Grein wrote for Goldmine in 1991—copied here on A&M Corner—he quotes Midler from that Sept. 1990 Redbook magazine interview thusly:
"She had tremendous talent, and I was a jerk for saying those things," Midler told Redbook earlier this year. "I was young and stupid and crazy and thought I was doing profound and enduring stuff. But I wasn't--I was adding to the ugliness in the world.”
I suspect that the source Harry links to, as well as a few others on the 'net, have taken some license and inserted the word anorexia into that quote when it didn't exist in the original article.
Karen made fat jokes throughout their career in interviews and appearances.
And... we've come full circle...
I think all of us have said things we regret. We've all done and said things that we wish we could take back. With self-awareness, empathy, and maturity, we apologize and make amends for our words and behavior. It doesn't erase what transpired, but it goes a long way to making things right. One of the best feelings in the world is making a heartfelt and sincere apology to someone and receiving a gracious and accepting reply. We all make mistakes; we are human. We are stronger when we try to focus on the good things:
"Sometimes, not often enough, we reflect upon the good things...."
Here are some x-ray skits from the show. Mama Cass is the last one.
No wonder they stayed away from TV specials for another five years. Why was Karen doing skits dressed as a nurse and who thought up and produced this rubbish? Absolute drivel and way beneath her talents.
this was a throw-a-way summer replacement series that was probably completed in 3 or 4 weeks. each show would run down the alphabet, " x " was x-ray, so Karen and Mark were dressed as medical staff.
The MAKE YOUR OWN KIND OF MUSIC show used letters of the alphabet as a divider between segments and within segments. That's why you see Karen sitting in a U for "Close To You" and Herb Alpert performs from an H.
Since nothing begins with X, they did an X-ray skit every week. Nothing more complicated than that.
In Make Your Own Kind of Music, didn't Karen open an x-ray of deceased Mama Cass? It was a folded in 1/2 and opened up very wide. I don't see that there is a difference between making fun of anorexia and making fun of obesity. Just saying. It was a time in our culture where people made fun of others for unkind reasons. Karen made fat jokes throughout their career in interviews and appearances.
But it seems we've put to bed the idea that Bette ever did that; she didn't, it seems.
All very true. That being said, Karen looks great in a nurse's uniform!Let’s not forget this was taped in 1971...47 years ago. Very different times and the humor was about as un-PC as could be.
Those humorless segments were written for them. As most of you know, Karen called the results ‘horrible’, and that Carpenters were ‘violently mishandled’. Karen said they realized immediately that it was a mistake, and they ended up shying away from TV for a number of years because of it.
Just to give you an idea of how off-base it was, they had Dusty Springfield on as a guest and they didn’t even ponder the idea of putting she and Karen together for a duet! Really, really dumb. So, they stuck them together and they made some joke about fish and chips, I think. Yikes.