But the damage was done. The next day the New York Post blared, “Oscar Grouch Trashes SI Kids.” Perez Hilton posted an item and scrawled, “Shame on You!” on a picture of me (which I realize is still better than an ejaculating cartoon penis, which is what he usually draws on people), and the New York Times headline read DID P.S. 22 SINGERS RUIN OSCARS? Even worse, the Times called me “curmudgeonly.” Me, curmudgeonly!
No one printed any part of my apology, and the stories rolled out all week. I was the ultimate elitist and a self-righteous tool—the Housewives dude who would dare trash a wholesome public school choir. The Times “Week in Review” put my quote between one from Gadhafi saying “All my people love me” and John Galliano’s “I love Hitler” anti-Semitic rant. Oh, and in the same edition an op-ed repeated my “whore” line regarding Charlie Sheen’s “goddesses,” making my Morning Joe appearance a twofer in terms of ill-advised commentary.
When I think about it today, I have to laugh, albeit ruefully: The Oscars, “Over the Rainbow,” a kids’ choir, bad outfits, and me, all wrapped in an Oz-themed tornado that made me wish a house would fall from the sky and smoosh me. Could there possibly be a gayer scandal?
For days, my Twitter feed was an endless stream of now ex-fans telling me they saw me for the arrogant prick that I truly was. Wendy Williams went after me on her show, and I’m sure Carole from Mississippi was upset that she’d wasted her foundation on my cheek. Bette Midler tweeted, wondering what I could’ve been thinking. Bette Midler! If only she’d sung the damn song at the Oscars, none of this would’ve happened. I dared to venture out to a New York Knicks game and a huge mountain of a guy came up to me, got two inches from my face, and yelled, “STATEN ISLAND RULES!!!!” I told him I agreed, but of course I thought he was going to punch my lights out. The longer it went, the more frustrated I became and the worse I felt. But no one felt worse than my mom.
“ENOUGH ALREADY,” she yelled to me over the phone. “This is RIDICULOUS! When is it going to END!? Do you have any idea the PROBLEMS that are going on in the WORLD right now? People are mentioning this to me at SCHNUCKS!” (If people were talking about this at Schnucks supermarket in Missouri, then I was in even worse trouble than I’d thought.) “Why does anyone give a damn what you said?” She told me—for the five thousandth time in my life—to “WATCH. YOUR. MOUTH.” Oh, and she said to “MAKE IT STOP!” Like I had the power to do that all along and I was just letting it go on because I didn’t realize I just had to click my heels together three times. (Although if anyone in the world could have made it happen, it was not me, but Evelyn Cohen.)
Since my public apology on my show was completely ineffective, I contemplated a new course of action. I felt like I should know a thing or two about what not to do in a situation like this, having been a human shield between countless warring women on numerous reunion shows. Housewives’ apologies are often like dinner parties—in that they usually go horribly wrong. The aggrieved only becomes more aggrieved, and everything is misinterpreted and relations are worse than they were to begin with. But here I was, walking in the shoes of women who’d stuck feet in their filler-plumped mouths and paid the price. And, sister, I did not like those Louboutins. When Patti Stanger went two steps too far two feet from me on Watch What Happens Live (calling gays incapable of monogamy and Jewish men liars), I watched as she made it right. The advice I’d always given the Housewives was to own their words and to say sorry and mean it, but I’d done that already and it made no difference whatsoever. After a lifetime of overtalkative slipups that had been smoothed over by everyone from my mom to my bosses, now it was up to me to clean up my own mess.
Not that Evelyn didn’t have ideas. She suggested going to the school and apologizing in person. I told her I was worried that that would generate more attention. I wanted the kids to know I was sincere and not just doing it for appearances. Dave suggested that I donate instruments to the school, which seemed to me like a blatant bid for mercy in the press. And besides, the kids were a chorus, not a band.
I finally just wrote a note directly to the choir director. I told him that adults say stupid things sometimes and that I wished the kids nothing but success. It was, in my opinion, an honest and humble apology delivered the right way.
A couple days later (well over a week after Oscar night), Perez Hilton reported that I had “finally” apologized to the kids and that they were responding. He posted a YouTube video of the choir director reading my note aloud to the kids, who clapped at the end. At that moment, I felt so relieved—the kids, it seemed, had forgiven me, which was all that really mattered. But then the choir director told them that I could’ve sent a longer note and that I could’ve shown up in person, but that he guessed it was okay. I thought it was kind of crappy that he was telling the kids all the things I didn’t do—was that a good lesson on the importance of being gracious? Then
