Posted on 05/14/2003 11:19:38 AM PDT by Mister Magoo
The Yellow By Rosie O’Donnell From The Advocate, May 27, 2003
So Michael Moore and Eminem won Oscars because the art they make is pure yellow. None better, more real, or true. Those in the audience voted for these two men—these outcasts—because they knew that if they didn’t, they would be cursed.
See, no one knows where yellow comes from. How to make it has become a business but not a science. There is no surefire way to create it. And if you have ever been lucky enough to do so—the reason always somehow eludes. It’s magic. It’s real, true, and brutally honest.
Yellow—with my kids. Yellow—with Parker always. The boy who first handed me my own piece of human form, himself. The bundle of bright yellow—warming my very core—formerly frozen and unhabitable. Parker.
Fame stole my yellow.
In happened during the third year of my show. The joy of watching people on the street corner—gone. Of finding the perfect cotton Gap pullover (size 24 months) on the sale rack—none there. Playing with my son in the park—ruined.
My yellow was officially missing.
Truth—what is it, and how much can you compromise it before it goes? I told the truth during the first two years of my show, for the most part. Enough to allow the yellow in, at least. I spoke of dreams—of Tom and Barbra and Broadway. I believed in their yellow.
Here I was, a fat Irish tough gal from New York, invited into the palace ball. And when that was real, the public responded. They got yellow from me, and I felt yellow giving it to them.
So I was canonized the Queen of Nice—universally loved and praised. At first it felt nice. But that soon began to change. You can develop a taste for worship, and when you do, the yellow fades.
It started to show on my face and my body. And as I became bigger and sadder—starved for yellow. I filled my craving with food—getting madder still with my expanding girth and with my inability to make more yellow.
Falling in love—a life-changing level of love—with a woman of brilliant yellow. But I forced myself to deny it—because that’s what we’re taught to do in our society.
OK, I reasoned, I won’t tell, but I won’t hide. Kel came places with me and the press knew, and it was printed—but I never commented. And that made it OK for me, I thought. Still, the yellow we had together lost something by never being let out.
The show stopped shining for me by the third and fourth years, but I got my yellow marching on Washington and shaking my fist at the National Rifle Association. I had something to believe in, to fight for. It made it easier knowing that the show would be over by 2002. Maybe then I could detox myself and my family and get us all back to the yellow.
So Michael Moore makes a brave and brilliant movie—and it is yellow. And the Hollywood types who voted for him in private knew that if they denied him his Oscar, they might lose their own ability to create—yellow.
He won. Up he went in his “I’m not one of you” Sears polyester suit in a size no one in Hollywood would ever allow themselves to be in. Wow.
Then he did it—his big “mistake.” He opened his mouth and told the truth. And all those people clad in million-dollar jewels and almost believable lies—the ones not nearly as courageous and without half of his conviction—were forced to fess up.
I wanted to shout, “Who are you anyway? You give him an award for the truth and boo him when he speaks it?”
Fame. It forces you to be afraid, to be removed from who you are. You’re alone in the dark watching Michael Moore make yellow but too scared to admit in public that you saw it there. Shame on you.
So why did I leave my show? It took my yellow. I wanted it back. Without it, I can’t live.
O’Donnell is adapting her memoir, Find Me, for the stage, featuring her own art and original music by Cyndi Lauper.
Rosie! Move away from the yellow!
That's an easy problem to solve, Rosie. A case of Budweiser will help you make more yellow...
Boy? She adopted a child's child? I'm lost.
My wife's Norwegian grandfather had a "yellow statue."
When it rang he would pick it up and say, "Yellow, statue?"
Well, she nailed the color of these hounds; give her that.
Yea, yea, but you probably stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
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