
Or something like that.
Apparently, sleeping in tents and bunks is good enough for our brave men and women serving in the Armed Forces, but for Jessica Simpson, not so much:
Jessica Simpson is headlining the Operation MySpace concert in Kuwait Monday, but industry insiders are wondering how Simpson is going to pull off making her performance look like a gift to the troops given how little time she’s spending with them and the exorbitant expense required to shuttle Simpson overseas and back to the U.S.
According to a source close to the Simpson camp, a private plane carrying Simpson and her entourage — which includes dad Joe, hairstylist Ken Paves, her personal assistant and a stylist — left L.A. and was due in Kuwait the evening of March 9. Total cost for the plane was approximately $150,000.
Someone will be picking up the tab for accommodations as well, even though it’s been touted that Simpson will be forgoing her standard hotel suite to spend the night living like the troops in a bunk. The source close to Simpson predicts that any time spent in a bunk will last no longer than the time it takes for a photo.
“Jessica doesn’t sleep in tents or bunks the night before a concert. She needs to give a good performance — there’s no way Joe will want The Pussycat Dolls (who are also performing as part of the same show) to upstage his daughter. He’ll have her sleeping in a proper bed in the right environment.”
Other expenses include her stylist and makeup artist (who both charge approximately $6,000 per day), and Paves, whose day rate is a whopping $10,000, according to the Simpson source.
“This isn’t a charity show. The people around Jessica aren’t donating their time or cutting their rates as if this was Jess’s charity Operation Smile. Someone is picking up the tab, and it’s not going to be Jessica.”
When the concert is over, Simpson has about three hours for quality time with the troops before her plane takes off again. “Literally, she’s going to sing ‘These Boots Are Made for Walking,’ and she’s going to be walking herself right back onto that plane,” said the source.
“The decision for her to do this doesn’t make sense,” said the source. “Her album is not ready for promoting, she risks being upstaged by the Pussycat Dolls and there’s no way to come out of this without looking like a financial drain on the project.” (MySpace and Simpson’s reps decline to comment on who is covering costs.)
What, girlfriend can’t put on her own hair and makeup? This isn’t a movie or a red carpet appearance, it’s a concert for the troops. And is Jessica Simpson really the best we can do? Haven’t the troops suffered enough already?
I realize that celebs do have certain special needs that Joe Schmoe The Ragpicker doesn’t have, especially as far as security. But come on…a brush, a hair dryer, and some mousse don’t cost that much, and every first-grader can comb their own hair and apply a product to their lips.
I am all for entertaining the troops, but I am not at all for people using that to promote themselves and engage in diva behavior. And Jessica hasn’t done anything in years that hasn’t been all about her. Instead of wasting all that money, at least some of it could be donated to charities who help the soldiers and their families. Better yet, donate it all, and let Jessica stay at home. But wait…would she get any press out of that?
Face it, sistah…you’re no Marilyn, who went to Korea while on her honeymoon to Joe DiMaggio and performed ten shows in four days, swooping in while hanging out of a helicopter, singing to the troops in the freezing cold, and getting sick in the process:
February 16, 1954: Marilyn arrives in Korea. Her entrance is magnificent. Anticipating the Playboy-bunny scene in Apocalypse Now, she asks the helicopter pilot to swoop down over the troops in the field so she can wave to them. Lying on the helicopter floor, Marilyn extends her upper torso fully outside the bay (a pair of hefty enlisted men holding her legs) as the chopper repeatedly strafes the front.
The star, who has never before played to a live audience, has pulled together an act out of numbers from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire. In her posthumous memoir, My Story, Monroe describes waiting in the wings before her first performance and hearing the roar of the crowd drown out the music. An agitated officer rushes her out on stage, afraid that the audience will riot. At the last of Monroe’s ten performances (during which she entertains some 100,000 troops) the troops do riot. Forced to wait for hours in subzero cold, some 6,000 members of the 45th (”Thunderbird”) Division stomp down the barriers and throw rocks to clear the stage for Marilyn. The next morning she returns to wish them goodbye, but instead of sayonara uses eleewah, Korean for “Come here,” and precipitates another mad stampede. Marilyn left Korea with a mild case of pneumonia, but told Jennings that her work there had been her “greatest experience with any kind of audience,” “the best thing” that had ever happened to her.
(I do know that there were many, many other entertainers who went overseas and endured harsh conditions to bring our brave troops some joy, but Marilyn was the first one to come to mind when thinking of someone for a compare/contrast. Face it, it wouldn’t have been as effective had I chosen Bob Hope. And he didn’t look nearly as good in a dress.)