Ultraliberal singer Barbra Streisand lamented Hillary Clinton’s election loss in an interview with Leonard Lopate on Wednesday on the New York public radio station WNYC. Like Hillary, Streisand blamed sexism, not Hillary, for the defeat. It came after a discussion of Streisand’s funding for women’s heart disease research.
“Women are still so underestimated.,it’s incredible to watch, you know, even this last election with Hillary, the kind of – the strong woman, the powerful woman, the educated woman, the experienced woman – being thought of as the Other, you know or too elite, or too educated,” she complained. “It’s very, very odd to me, and it was heartbreaking for her to lose, you know?” Lopate replied with a softball question:
LOPATE: She’s claiming that one of the reasons is misogyny. You agree?
STREISAND: Totally. I’ve been writing about it for a long, long time. I gave a speech after I won an award at Women in Film for Yentl. I talked about women against women, and the jealousy and the competitiveness, and women not trusting other women, and not supporting them really...
LOPATE: And why do you think in the United States? England’s already had two female prime ministers, the prime minister of Germany is a woman, we’ve seen prime ministers, women prime ministers all over Asia, for example, in Africa – why not the United States, which is the most enlightened country in that regard in the world?
STREISAND: We are a younger country in a sense.
She explained that she filmed Yentl in England during Margaret Thatcher’s time in office -- it came out in 1983 -- and in England “They have no problem with little old me. When I came to the United States, it was a different thing, a different perspective.” She’s talking about the executives and financiers in Hollywood being uncomfortable with a movie helmed by a woman. How this matches Hillary for President is anyone’s guess.
Streisand later added that “power and women has always been suspect. Strong women have always been suspect, don’t you think? In this country?” Lopate replied like a liberal: “I’m not intimidated by strong women, if the woman has something to say, what’s the difference? But I guess it’s true for a lot of people.”
Lopate constantly buttered up Barbra about her new album of duets with celebrities including Alec Baldwin and Melissa McCarthy. Lopate joked about McCarthy: “Will you consider doing anything with Sean Spicer in the future?” She replied: “I will do nothing with Sean Spicer!”
Lopate added “She does the best Sean Spicer, don’t you think?” Streisand agreed “Oh my God, that was hysterical, absolutely hysterical. I wish she was running the press office, you know?” She didn’t praise Baldwin’s “Trump thing,” but insisted he was a “wonderful actor and a lovely guy.”
