Barbara Walters - Literati *and* ESQ.

The Barb wants to invade The Bard's territory now, it would appear, with her penning, authoring and versing nostalgic to the extreme in her newly-published (and heavily promoted, on Entertainment Tonight, Larry King Live and The View, of course - to name but a few!) AUTOBIOGRAPHY - a mammoth 600 ton (I mean pages) BRICK...! (An ideal weapon to use when you want to throw something at your sourer half during break-up! But I am digressing, I suppose...)

She muses about her past loves; a whopping amount of pages -five- are devoted to her then-scandalous affair with that half-black senator (who is now 88, remarried, and would have been real happy if he had never been mentioned in her book at all!)
She flaunts three marriages, though noting that 'maybe she was never cut out for marriage" (or something to that effect - hey, I paraphrase, I don't quote when it's "hot off the press" or simply "too hot to handle" which means gossipy, really!)

The book has touching passages though; when she writes about her father, "ashen and unresponsive," I can only think of my own experiences in that domain - and so will everyone else with a heart. She chose to showcase those passages first on the *ET* week-end showcase show, and it was another astute move from our shrewd Walters gal, of course. However, her reading passages of her own book accomplished pretty much the opposite of the desired effect, one feels; as her very voice and monotonous, almost mundane, tone does not do any passage justice. Especially not the most dramatic ones, such as the father's dramatic moments and the miscarriages she recollects.

That she devoted an entire chapter to Monica Lewinsky is also somewhat of an absurdity. An entire chapter for her - and only five pages devoted to something personal? Maybe Barbara, even after all these years gathering up accumulated wisdom and journalistic experience, has not quite honed herself well enough to write this autobiography yet. It is my luminous conclusion, because she cuts away from recollections to do some more journalism here and there - and that may be the primary reason why she gets to the stunning total of 600 pages too...!
(She aims to be the Stephen King of autobiographies, I think. This one will have a sequel - bank on it.)

The only fitting finish to this has to be Gilda Radner's *Barbara WooWoo* or *Baba Iaga* or *Baba Wawa* or whatever it was again that that skit was called; this is what we need here now, I think...!


Oh well...