Blonde on Blonde: Drinking; Disturbing Studies; and Dylan
When a segment of Blonde on Blonde begins with the I-Man dinging his bell (literally), Deirdre Imus and Lis Wiehl know it’s going to be an interesting 15 minutes. “Good morning,” they greeted each other, quickly adding, “I think.”
Before touching on the news stories of the day, Imus shared with the group that Sean Hannity tried to get his wife drunk during her appearance on Hannity Monday night. Or something along those lines…
“You’re exaggerating it,” Deirdre told her husband. “He was just asking me if I ever drink. There’s a big difference!”
Unlike Lis, who requires just two glasses of wine before she’s on the floor, Deirdre does not drink alcohol, but encouraged anybody who drinks to enjoy organic wine.
“Is that what you drank the night you conceived Wyatt?” Bernard chimed in, from somewhere off-camera.
Then, Imus played some footage of crybaby Tom Brady talking about how emotionally draining it was for him to be drafted in the sixth round of the NFL draft. Though Deirdre called Brady’s teary performance “an acting moment,” she added that she’ll gladly accept any opportunity to gaze at Brady, whether he’s speaking or not.
Deirdre cares less about Tiger Woods, whom Lis would like to see win another golf tournament. She then made the mistake of calling him “an icon.”
“He’s an icon for putting it in the hole, right?” Deirdre quipped, and was immediately charged with acting like, well, one of Tiger’s former girlfriends. Let’s leave it at that.
In more upsetting news, a new study by the American Red Cross found that almost 60 percent of American teenagers think waterboarding or sleep deprivation are “sometimes” acceptable forms of torture.
“I hearken back to Clinton and oral sex,” Lis said. “When we grew up, we knew that oral sex was sex, and then Clinton sort of changed the definition.”
Though her point was that the whole definition of torture has now been changed for this generation of kids, Deirdre was stymied by the comparison to oral sex. The real force at work in this instance, she explained, is that kids nowadays are growing up in a time where talk of terrorism is pervasive. “It’s a whole different perspective,” she added.
Deirdre herself has a whole different perspective on Bob Dylan, whose lyrics an old boyfriend once tried to pass off as his own poetry. But the real Dylan did himself no favors this week by kowtowing to the Chinese government during a performance in Beijing, where he agreed not to play certain songs.
Imus was shocked at the subservience of Dylan, who once walked off the set of The Ed Sullivan Show because he wasn’t allowed to play “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues.”
“I think that’s what you’ve got to do if you want to play [in China],” Lis, whose latest novel is Heart of Ice, said. She added that it would be foolish to apply American standards to a Chinese issue.
Horrified, Deirdre countered, “So, if you wanted your book sold in China—what if they said, ‘Let us read it first and see if we approve?’”
Speaking of Heart of Ice, Imus noted how nice it was for Bill O’Reilly to continue promoting Lis’s book on his show. “Does he ever try to get you drunk, like Hannity did my wife?” he wondered.
Accused of being worried about Hannity’s relationship with Deirdre, Imus replied, “Nobody’s nervous. I just want to illustrate how sleazy my friend Hannity is.”
-Julie Kanfer
Reader Comments (3)
Canada held hostage....no more
we have been defeated....no deleted
as Imus would say....it was a joke
Dateline
New Jersey...HOME OF THE BOSS......bruce...not tubby the governor
Oh my God
For the first time I watched blonde on blonde on the fox website...poor lis wheel...every time you clanged that bell she looked like
a deer in the headlights.
Also why oh why..does les keep looking at somebody off camera...does she have a sniper trained at the old cowboy?????
LIKE IMUS
I haven't had a drink in 40 yrs...but if that loud clanking annoying bell keeps ringing....BOTTOMS UP MR VODKA
A loyal listener who always sends in donations while living on Canadian food stamps