Vancouver Sun

DON’T BLAME NEW YORK FOR TRUMP, SAYS FRAN LEBOWITZ

- DANA GEE dgee@postmedia.com twitter.com/dana_gee

It was the morning of Sept. 11 when I spoke with American writer, social commentato­r and quintessen­tial New Yorker Fran Lebowitz.

Lebowitz was in her New York City apartment and we were supposed to be talking about her upcoming speaking engagement­s (Sept. 27 and 28) at the BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts at Capilano College. But as is the case with pretty much all the Americans I speak with lately, the topic invariably turned to the U.S. political scene.

After all, isn’t it the car crash we are all slowing down to watch?

I told her I felt a bit bad that I wasn’t checking in with any of the 9/11 anniversar­y coverage, but I just couldn’t bear to turn on the TV for fear of Rudy Giuliani, who was the mayor of New York City at the time of the 2001 attack, a fact he still dines out on whenever he has a camera pointed at him. That of course is when he isn’t busy delivering erratic, and some may say dubious, defences of his client Donald Trump.

“Then I would suggest you watch MSNBC where they rarely have him on,” said Lebowitz matterof-factly.

Lebowitz added she had made the mistake of looking at 9/11 coverage and some of what she saw angered her.

“Bloomberg, Cuomo, Giuliani in the audience and I thought are these guys ever going to leave? Are we ever going to get rid of these guys?” said the soon to be 68-yearold Lebowitz bemoaning the old guard of Giuliani, former mayor Michael Bloomberg and current governor Andrew Cuomo. “If you just had to look at the people we have to look at all the time it is like the average age is 75. I’m old myself, it’s not like I’m young and I keep saying if I’m old and I’m sick of these old men, what must it be like to be young? How sick could you be of these old men?”

Lebowitz said that while she hopes there’s a sea change in the demographi­c of the modern American politician — she points to progressiv­e 28-year-old New Yorker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s defeat of 19-year incumbent Democratic congressma­n Joseph Crowley as a good step in the youth department — she believes a woman being elected president is still a long way off.

“People now say to me ‘what do you think next time, Elizabeth Warren? Kamala Harris?’ I say: ‘Are you out of your mind? Do you see what just happened?’” said Lebowitz, who is the focus of the Martin Scorsese documentar­y Public Speaking.

“I realize that a lot of people have political feelings about Hillary Clinton, but to me the main feeling they had about her was that she was a woman. I don’t care what they say; it is like the main reaction to Obama was because he was black. They don’t even know what his policies are.”

Lebowitz’s writing career began back in the 1970s. She wrote movie and book reviews for a magazine, then Andy Warhol hired her to be a columnist for his Interview magazine. She penned work for the fashion magazine Mademoisel­le and published two books of collected essays: Metropolit­an Life (1978) and Social Studies (1981). She also had a recurring role as a judge on Law & Order.

These days she is listed as contributi­ng editor and occasional columnist for Vanity Fair and she tours as a public speaker. For her public speaking events Lebowitz — in her trademark Savile Row menswear blazer, white dress shirt and Levi’s — takes the stage and is interviewe­d for a half-hour before the floor is opened to questions from the audience.

Now you don’t have to be the Long Island Medium to figure out that Lebowitz will be fielding some Trump-related questions.

“It’s not just me but everyone I know is obsessed with this,” said Lebowitz about her country ’s current political climate.

“I know for myself ever since the election I feel grief stricken. Look I have hated a lot of presidents. We had George Bush who was a horrible president, for eight years it was awful.

“Ronald Reagan was a horrible president. Richard Nixon was a horrible president. I have lived through numerous horrible presidents, but it wasn’t like this.

“The difference with George Bush only really was that he acted like the president. George Bush acted in a presidenti­al manner,” added Lebowitz.

“He wore normal clothes, he didn’t die his hair orange. He stood up when you are supposed to stand up. He shook hands when you are supposed to shake hands. He had the normal manners of an adult man. There is nothing about Donald Trump that reminds me of an adult man. He is the world’s worst three-year-old.”

Lebowitz complains that as she is travelling, people complainin­g about Trump often lump her in with the other Americans that did vote for him. You know, as in: “what have you Americans done?” That makes her bristle.

“I didn’t do anything. I didn’t vote for him,” Lebowitz said. “In Madrid they got really annoyed because I kept reminding them about Franco: ‘Listen it’s not like you have a perfect record here.’”

Lebowitz wants to make it clear that she is a New Yorker and even though Trump is a New Yorker, New Yorkers did not support him in the 2016 election.

“Nobody voted for him here. Hillary Clinton won New York City 9-to-1. I don’t think she won 9-to-1 anywhere else. Maybe not even in her own house. Because we knew him,” said Lebowitz.

“No one in New York City thought he was actually rich. Yes, of course, richer than me yes, but one thing New York City has an over-abundance of is rich people. We are so over-subscribed in rich people I can’t tell you. So none of the actual rich people thought he was rich, so since he was always saying he was rich, we knew he was lying about that. We also never thought he was a real estate developer because we have real estate developers here. They run the city, they always have. The real estate developers here, they never thought Donald Trump was a real estate developer.

“He is a cheap hustler. He is a criminal. He always has been that. He didn’t have any real money until now. Okay, now he has got rich in office, which has never happened,” added Lebowitz.

“There’s been a lot of bad presidents even in my lifetime, but no one ever got rich in office like this. It’s like having Imelda Marcos be the president.”

Or Vladimir Putin.

While politics play big in Lebowitz’s speaking engagement­s, they are not the only topics volleyed her way.

“Sometimes people ask you things that just startle you,” said Lebowitz.

“I can’t remember where I was, but a kid who was probably 15 raised her hand and asked: ‘did you ever meet Beyonce?”

Yes she has. It was years ago at an AIDS benefit concert. The Queen B was still buzzing around in Destiny’s Child and Lebowitz said she saw them on a side stage at the event.

“I told people they had to go see them,” said Lebowitz, who has been a popular late-night talk show guest for decades. “So yes, I discovered her.”

While lots of speakers find the audience Q&A a nerve-racking propositio­n, Lebowitz embraces the no-net (she never knows what the questions are from the moderator or the audience) approach.

“I love doing this. I love to talk, but mostly what I love more than anything in the world is to answer questions. It is my hobby and it’s not fun if I know the questions,” said Lebowitz.

“They can ask whatever they want and to me that is the most fun. When you do that, then you are talking about what the audience wants to talk about.”

Are there questions she doesn’t like?

“Here’s the upside of being old. If I don’t want to answer it, I won’t answer it. It’s not a law,” said Lebowitz.

When she is not travelling, Lebowitz — who moved to New York from New Jersey 50 years ago — chooses to be tucked into her NYC apartment with her two big loves, cigarettes and books.

She has a library of 10, 000-plus titles.

“I’m a city girl,” said Lebowitz. “I’m not dying to go sit at a beach.”

Nobody voted for (Donald Trump) here. Hillary Clinton won New York City 9-to-1 . ... Because we knew him.

 ?? BRIGITTE LaCOMBE ?? American social commentato­r and writer Fran Leibowitz has plenty to say about her country’s political situation and, of course, other stuff, too.
BRIGITTE LaCOMBE American social commentato­r and writer Fran Leibowitz has plenty to say about her country’s political situation and, of course, other stuff, too.

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