When Eartha was exiled from the United States professionally for denouncing the war in Vietnam and making poor Lady Bird Johnson cry in public, she picked up her 3 year old daughter, Kit ( Kitt MacDonald) and moved to Japan and eventually Paris although she traveled extensively and picked up many languages. (She sang one song on Saturday in Turkish.) Kitt is now her manager.

As is so often the case with a nation that proclaims itself the Land of The Free, President Johnson had her blacklisted and not one recording company or theater would hire her for fear of the CIA and FBI. (Aren't you glad times have changed--OH, what was that click on the telephone line?) she set up an two schools in South Africa. In 1978 she was nominated for a Tony award for her starring performance in another Broadway show, Timbuktu. It was her first major performance in the U.S. in ten years. When the show opened in Washington, D.C., Kitt was invited to the White House, where President Carter met her, saying, "Welcome home, Eartha.

Reason will always win out, but it takes time and pain, and most of the perpetrators have gotten rich along the way. As I mentioned to The Countess today, shouldn't there be heads being carried around on pikes by now.

Oh, and I've always been a whore for souvenirs.