Queen of Mean

August 21, 2007

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I was going to write in defense of Leona Helmsley this morning. I was going to say that she was just a misunderstood greedy old lady who said a bunch of stupid stuff. I was going to say that surely she couldn't have been half bad. I was thinking that between some hateful lady and combover Trump I would choose the hateful lady.

Then I read the papers. It turns out that it's fairly unanimous that the lady was, in fact, a miserable bitch. I can't defend her.

The New York Times says that after her son died, Helmsley evicted his wife and teenage son from their home and ordered the son's estate to pay back a loan for 100 grand. Nice.

The New York Post has a neatly arranged bullet-pointed list of horrible things she did and said, all of which sounded great delivered by Suzanne Pleshette in the Leona TV mini, "The Queen of Mean."

I turned to Cindy Adams, who you can count on to defend rich old ladies like Imelda Marcos or Brooke Astor or Leona Helmsley. Turns out that Cindela is using Leona's death to tell a horrible Leona story she's kept in her back pocket for years. Seems Leona generously insisted that Cindy's infirm mother use the Helmsley facilities in Florida, and then had the Adams clan thrown off the property because Mama Adams had homosexuals on her nursing staff.

Cindy quotes Leona: "Remove them. I will not have homosexuals in my cabana. Throw the whole bunch out!!!" She says Leona got Marshalls to throw Cindy Adam's mom off her property. Cindy says she's not gonna speak to Leona in the next life because of this!

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