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Bette Midler Lashes Out At Lady Gaga For Stealing Routine
By
Jen Carlson
Published Jul 19, 2011
Modified Jul 19, 2011
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Jul 19, 2011
Modified Jul 19, 2011
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At a performance in Sydney, Australia over the weekend, Lady Gaga rolled out onto the stage in a wheelchair wearing a mermaid outfit. Sound familiar? Maybe that's because Bette Midler created that act back in the 1980s. Midler took to Twitter to rant at the pop star, saying, "Dear @ladygaga I've been doing singing mermaid in a wheelchair since 1980—You can keep the meat dress and the firecracker tits—mermaid's mine." Indeed, Midler did do it first:
Gaga—who has stolen ideas before (allegedly!)—says she "didn't know that she'd done (it), but I do now and I think it's great. Obviously I feel connected to women in theatre and women from the past. Maybe we're just cut from the same cloth."
Meanwhile, one source told HuffPo that, "To this day [Bette] regrets never saying anything in the early '80s when Madonna replaced her as the queen of vulgar without ever crediting her. Now she's had enough and needed to speak out. If it wasn't for Bette there would be no Madonna and if it wasn't for Madonna we would have no Lady Gaga."
After a few rants over Twitter, however, Midler was ready to make nice, saying: "@ladygaga, let's drink this over at the Emmys in September. Fabulous mermaids can coexist!" But Gaga will still have to answer to the disabled group that was enraged by her wheelchair stunt:
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Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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