Usually, though, I forget that anyone knows who I am. But something happened in 2010 that made me realize that I had indeed become something of a public figure. And I wouldn’t mind giving this moment back. It involves a terrible storm, Diana Ross, and a bunch of Munchkins singing. And I know what you’re thinking: Didn’t The Wiz come out in 1978?
The story really starts my senior in college, on Academy Awards night—the gay Super Bowl. That night I was bored to tears: Dances with Wolves cleaned up, winning award after award. I hadn’t seen the movie and I never will. Then finally, somewhere along that evening’s endless march to the obvious Best Picture result, there was a performance that gave me an Oscar® boner!
Since then, I’ve watched the moment online so many times that I know it by heart. It begins with a black-and-white clip from The Wizard of Oz. Judy Garland is in Kansas, plaintively singing “Over the Rainbow.” A few lines into the song, another voice joins in, and a glorious duet erupts, as Miss Diana Ross appears onstage in a white sequined dress. Slowly, the Judy clip dissolves and it’s all Diana. The music swells, and Diana says, “Sing with me, Los Angeles … sing along!” as images of the audience appear behind her on a massive screen. Jessica Tandy is singing. Lovebirds Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are singing. Slowly people in other cities appear behind Ross. And they are singing, too! The world! Tokyo! London! Moscow! Diana is leading a live, global sing-along of “Over the Rainbow”!
It would be hard to create a moment like this today—we’re all so jaded and steeped in irony—but that number was pure, glorious theater. At the end, Ms. Ross struck a pose that suggested she might’ve just brokered world peace. It was her signature move: hands in the air, head back, legs in sort of a lopsided, tilted almost-curtsy. The silhouette was iconic Diana-Triumphant-Showbiz-Lady for whom there Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.
I was devastated that I hadn’t recorded it on my VCR. I was too enraptured to coordinate the remote. Back then, YouTube was only a futuristic gleam in a young nerd’s eye, so I was forced to face the possibility that I would go through life only seeing that clip one time. (So, if I didn’t already thank you in the acknowledgments, shout-out to the person who invented YouTube for allowing me to watch this and, naturally, Susan Lucci’s Emmy win—and cute pandas—any time I need a pick-me-up.)
Fast-forward twenty years. I’m at my bestie Bruce’s place in Los Angeles putting on my tuxedo as another interminable Oscar broadcast is coming to an end. I’m in a hurry to get ready because I’m lucky to have invitations for what I know will be two great parties: Vanity Fair’s annual bash and then a more intimate affair hosted by Madonna. I half-watch the proceedings over my shoulder in the mirror as The King’s Speech wins Best Picture and I work against the clock to sculpt my hair into something less Q-tip-ish. Then I turn toward the TV and see a group of children clad in royal blue and lime green T-shirts trooping onstage and mounting a set of risers. Their mouths are open and they’re gesticulating wildly, in a re-imagination of Miss Ross’s glorious rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” but to me it looks like a lip-synched catastrophe.
I cannot lunge for the “mute” button quickly enough. My friends and I are all scowling. What happened to the Oscars being Hollywood’s most glamorous night? Clearly, I’m a fan of a good Oscar sing-along, but my beloved Diana moment featured pageantry and celebrities and formal wear! Kids on risers wasn’t doing it for me.
Thirty-six hours later I was back in New York and booked on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, which I like to think of as a current-events version of Watch What Happens Live, serving Starbucks instead of Maker’s Mark. This time, I was determined not to indulge too heartily at Mo’ Joe’s free coffee bar, because in the past I’d guzzled so much that I shvitzed my way through my segments, thus ensuring a barrage of “Your upper lip is sweaty” tweets when I left the studio. (Slightly less embarrassing than the time I walked off the stage at The Wendy Williams Show to see that I had several hundred tweets waiting. I’d come on to surprise Wendy’s special viewer co-host Carole from Mississippi, allegedly a big fan of mine. And at some point during the hysteria of our greeting, Carole’s cheek transferred a large swatch of her [very brown] foundation to my cheek, which made me look like Carole had beaten me up instead of kissed me. Suffice it to say that I don’t love anything involuntary happening to my face on live TV, but now, with social media, you have to relive the humiliation as various time zones live-tweet the experience in waves throughout the day. But I digress.)
My segment on Morning Joe was called “Oscar After Party with Andy Cohen,” but it was essentially a pop culture free-for-all. We talked about Charlie Sheen and I referred to his two latest “goddesses”—as he called them—as “whores.” The minute it came out of my mouth I regretted it. This was mean, potentially slanderous, and hurtful. I mean, I did think the women might, in fact, have been prostitutes, which is why I used that term, but still. I shouldn’t have said it. My mother had raised me better than that. In the back of my mind I wondered if I’d just derailed the whole appearance.
Then
