“I am always amazed by Diane Sawyer; she is so elegant and manages to pull it together at three o’clock AM every day. Hillary Clinton is great. Even in countries where women are not considered contemporaries, she walks into a room and speaks with such authority. And of course there’s Michelle Obama – nothing about her is disingenuous. I’m thrilled she’s out there as the face of American women.” That is the adorable Renée Zellweger talking about who’s got glamour to Glamour magazine. Renée is on the cover, and although it’s a pretty picture, I don’t know if I’d recognize my friend Renée, were it not for the coverline: “Renée!” (The shots inside the mag are not so overlit, and look more like the unique Miss Z.)


Glamour Magazine

Renée also tells what she looks for in a man: “I’m attracted to intelligence and creativity and passion – and not necessarily the romantic kind. I want to learn from someone who is greedy for information and light and laughter and the whole world. Someone who celebrates their days and finds inspiration in what other people accomplish.”

Miss Z. was recently linked with newsman Dan Abrams. But I hear that has palled. Well, Renee wants a lot – the light and laughter thing alone must be daunting! Not to mention finding a fellow celeb who “celebrates what other people accomplish.” Most of the people Renée runs into are busy contemplating their own famous, well-toned navels. It’s hard to be real in an unreal world.

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I love it that Kate Winslet now tops Glamour’s list of the “most glamorous.”

This probably tickles Kate as well. She goes around down in the Village in New York totally unrecognized, looking like any house frau lugging baby strollers. She insists she is angry even when the press dubs her “middle class,” insisting she is working class and raised up in a poor acting family. But Glamour says she’s “the most” just because she finally won the Oscar and didn’t trip over herself going up the stairs. True glamour is in short supply these days. 


Kate Winslet © Getty Images

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I caught “Monster-in-Law” the other night, and thought again what terrific, funny chemistry Wanda Sykes had with Jane Fonda, trying to dissuade Jane from tormenting Jennifer Lopez. This is a movie that definitely screams for a sequel.

Sykes played Fonda’s acerbic secretary in the great tradition of all acerbic secretaries who steal movies out from under the star – I’m thinking Thelma Ritter in “All About Eve.”

So now Wanda is in hot water because of quips about Rush Limbaugh at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Did Wanda go “too far”? It seems to me that every year at this event somebody goes too far. And, in our current nonstop cable “news” coverage, that screwup gets play. So Ms. Sykes is having her 48 hours of hot scrutiny.

Was she inappropriate? In a political world where our current president is still – seriously, no jokes – referred to as “a friend to terrorists,” as “not an American citizen” and as a “danger” to the USA, I’d put her remarks in that context. (Yet I don’t think it’s smart to ever bring 9/11 into a comedic monologue.) Not to mention the fact that at the last Correspondents’ Dinner, George W. Bush joked about not finding any WMDs in Iraq. Hilarious! More than 4,000 American soldiers died in Iraq and more than 100,000 innocent Iraqis died.

But why, even in the name of humor, invite a barrage of criticism that will land right on top of President Obama, a man whom I assume Ms. Sykes supports and voted for? Does anybody ever think before they speak? Is Wanda right now thinking, “Oh, I made trouble for the president, I wish I hadn’t.”

Watch Wanda Sykes’s at the White House Correspondents Dinner: