Melissa Etheridge takes the stage
Posted: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 12:17 PM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
Democrats
From NBC's Chris Donovan
Melissa Etheridge, scheduled to be a panelist at tomorrow's Democratic presidential forum on GLBT issues, is no stranger to the political world. She was involved in Bill Clinton's successful 1992 campaign (after which she publicly came out as lesbian at one of the inaugural balls). She headlined rallies for Al Gore in the final days of his 2000 campaign. Since 2002, she has given over $6,000 in campaign contributions to Democrats, according to the FEC's web site. And just this February, she praised her friend Gore while accepting the Oscar for her song written for his "An Inconvenient Truth."
And as she sets to question the Democratic candidates in Los Angeles, including Hillary Clinton, it might be interesting to check out what she wrote about Bill Clinton in her tell-all 2001 memoir, "The Truth Is … My Life in Love and Music."
In this little nugget, she describes her role in the 1992 campaign, and an encounter with her then-partner Julie Cypher and Bill Clinton. "At the end of 1992, Julie became very politically involved with Bill Clinton and the presidential election. As it went along, I did a couple of benefits and we did a Young Democrats fundraiser at the Santa Monica airport. Bill and Hillary were attending, but they were late so the organizers kept telling me to stall. I played song after song until they got there. Bill spoke to the crowd and, before he left later that night, he came over to say hello to me. He took one look at Julie and he started checking her out. He didn't know she was with me. All he saw was an attractive, dark-haired girl, and he just zoomed her. She was like woo! He was very charming, that former president."
