The Liz Smith Column | 08/13/2009 11:00 pm
Liz Smith: Jennifer Westfeldt and Isabel Keating Triumph in 'A Lifetime Burning'

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday."
This is the quote on the gravestone of actor John Wayne at Pacific View Memorial Park.
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Barbra Streisand’s very much in the news these days. (She was "in the news" in this column only yesterday!) Now, her three-disc DVD set titled "Streisand: The Concerts," has gone gold and platinum after a three-week run at No. 1 on the Billboard Charts. This makes her set the biggest selling music DVD of 2009.
Her gold DVDS or videos No. 8 and her platinum DVDS or videos No. 5. Three of them have also gone multiplatinum.
Yeah, she’s all washed up!

Barbra Streisand © AP
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On September 2, a parole board will hear the plea of Susan Atkins that she be allowed out of prison because she is suffering from a terminal brain tumor that has nearly paralyzed her.
This 61-year-old member of the Charles Manson hippie drop-out "family" is the same killing machine who stabbed Sharon Tate 16 times as the actress begged for the life of her unborn child on the night of Aug. 8, 1969, in Hollywood.
Vincent Bugliosi is supporting Atkins’s release because her family hopes to see her out of this world, but he doesn’t believe in parole for the other two female murderers, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten. And not for Manson himself nor for his lieutenant Tex Watson. "Remember, I sought the death penalty for them all," says the lawyer who wrote Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders.
This book remains the bestselling crime tome in history. Over 7,000,000 in sales to date.
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Opinions, or oops! Someone told me this week that Eunice Kennedy Shriver had wanted to be buried by her brothers, Bobby and John, at Arlington Cemetery.
I didn’t really believe that this sensible woman, one of the most effective of all the Kennedys, would have asked for such special treatment. But she was already given the nation’s highest civilian honor in 1984 when President Ronald Reagan conferred on her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She also was the first living woman to be depicted on a U.S. commemorative coin, bearing her portrait as founder of the Special Olympics.
Vogue, Bazaar and Marie Claire have recently offered up the perennials that now burn brightly again – statement tights, high-heeled boots, great big bauble necklaces, short biker jackets and … sequin blazers. (I better go dig out my collection of Arnold Scaasi sequin blazers. Glad I didn’t give them away.)
It seems to me that the guys who now confess to having offered up their semen for the Michael Jackson children now number in the double digits. Aren’t these jerks ashamed of the worry, onus, distress they put on these poor children who believed Michael was their true father? Some people don’t seem to use common sense or common decency anymore.

Michael Jackson’s children © Getty Images
The Perseids, which happen every August as earth passes through rock and dust fragments left behind by the Comet Swift-Tuttle, put on a show last night. There were 80 shooting stars a minute. As I had just seen a trailer of the coming apocalypse movie "2012," I enjoyed the Perseids less than usual.
There ain’t no justice. When U.S. forces killed Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban chief, with a barrage after aerial surveillance, they sent him to paradise (maybe?) just as he was enjoying a massage on the roof of his father-in-law’s house.
Well, if you have to go, whattaway to go!
























26 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment
I cannot fathom this compassion by a man who prosecuted this woman who showed no compassion as she brutally murdered another woman and her unborn child. Has Vincent Bugliosi lost his mind?
Hopefully the parole board has not lost its mind and will remember that Sharon Tate begged this monster to spare her child as this monster brutally stabbed her to death. Something Vincent Bugliosi has forgotten.
My goodness, no one is "spitting" in her face. She is in prison because she committed a dreadful crime and that is the punishment. Believe me, I’m sure Sharon Tate, Rosemary LaBianca and Abigail Folger would have loved to live their lives into their sixties. Instead, they were brutally murdered by a person who later said she enjoyed watching the blood gush out of the victims.
Show Susan Atkins mercy? Compassion? Do you want to know what kind of compassion she showed Sharon Tate? Here are some examples: 1) Tate (while still alive) had a rope tied around her neck that was hung over a rafter with the other end tied to the bloody body of a dead friend. Anytime Sharon tried to move, she choked. 2) When Tate pleaded that she wanted to have her baby, Atkins looked her straight in the eyes and said something like "look b-tch, I don’t care about you OR your baby - you’re going to die." 3) After stabbing Tate repeatedly, Atkins tasted the dead woman’s blood. She later compared stabbing someone to having an orgasm. 4) Atkins revealed to a prison inmate that the Manson group wanted to mutilate the victims. They had wanted to cut off their fingers - and also gouge their eyes out and smash them against the wall. But they felt rushed. 5) The coroner said that Tate’s baby was a fully formed boy. Atkins admitted she had wanted to cut the baby out of Tate’s womb. 6) Atkins laughed during the murders and throughout the trial. And there’s so much more.
Please spread the word. Susan Atkins and these monsters must NEVER get out of prison.
Janet…to your list, I would add the fact that Susan Atkins was the one who personally dipped a towel into Sharon’s blood and wrote "PIG" on the wall.
These people were given the death penalty until California abolished capital punishment and their sentences were reduced to life in prison. The State already showed them the mercy they didn’t give their victims!
I couldn’t disagree more. To my knowledge, this woman is not exactly being kept in a cold cell and sleeping on a cot.
I read a good post from someone today on another site. He said that 40 years is a long time but these crimes were just too horrible. And he also suggested that anyone who believes these people deserve to be out should Google images of the Sharon Tate and LaBianca crime scenes. I did. There are photos in color. You need a strong stomach and I might have trouble sleeping tonight but it reminded me that those deeds were unimaginable.
By the way, one of the Manson killers sells erotic art with his wife from prison. What a "lovely" system we have in this country! :(
Perhaps instead of considering the killer’s family, you should think about giving more weight to what the victims’ families feel about this. And no one that I know is "ogling" the crime photos. However, we live in a world in which some people have refused to believe the guilt of these people or they downright idolize them. The director John Waters is proud to call Leslie Van Houten his "friend" and is pushing for HER release. She certainly isn’t near death.
Today, "Squeaky" Fromme got out of prison and Michael Vick is proudly talking about his new NFL deal. We live in a really sick world…
Well, why don’t you just volunteer to help take care of her if she were to be released? You’re so forgiving. Or how about having her as your neighbor? You just might sing a different tune in that case…
Let’s face it, you can express all the sympathy you want for her family and you can want compassion for this monster - but this one is not getting out in her lifetime. And that’s as it should be.