Arlen Specter Snags Hollywood Bucks

Republican Party turncoat Arlen Specter is being rewarded by Hollywood.

The buzz on the L.A. streets is that the Senate will be filibuster proof when the Democrats add Al Franken and Specter.

A recent Tina Daunt article in the Los Angeles Times trumpets the following headline: “Arlen Specter is welcome on the Left Coast.”

An upcoming fundraiser for Specter, co-hosted by Michele and Rob Reiner and Janet and Jerry Zucker, has become such a “hot ticket” that a larger venue may actually be needed.

The original event was designed to be a thank-you lunch for the Pennsylvania senator because of his support for embryonic stem cell research.

Longtime Hollywood political consultant Chad Griffin remarked that Specter “is coming to town as a celebrity now.”

In other Hollywood, D.C. news, Maya Rudolph has a White House confession.

Best known for being a “Saturday Night Live” cast member, Rudolph is promoting a new film, “Away We Go.”

It’s a romantic comedy about a couple who travel across America trying to find the right home for their yet-to-be-born baby.

Rudolph, who also happens to be the daughter of the late Minnie Ripperton, is expecting a second child herself in real life.

She recently revealed that she’s not pleased with her impression of Michelle Obama on the NBC show.

“I haven’t heard from her since I did her on SNL, probably because, in my humble opinion, my Michelle could’ve been a million times better,” Rudolph admitted to Parade.com.

Putting it a bit more graphically, she added, “I thought my impersonation sucked because it was just thrown at me,” noting that “Mrs. Obama was really hard to do.”

Of course, Rudolph is a First Lady fan and describes her as “really cool.”

“I just didn’t know how to do her justice. I was trying to be fantastic, and it was just really hard,” she confessed.

She also did an imitation of Michelle’s husband that she promises will remain classified.

“But it [the Michelle impression] was better than my Barack Obama impression, which I had to do in front of him. That was terrible. So I’m glad that that did not make it on the air. You’ll never see it,” Rudolph said.

It would have been better if the president had lent her his teleprompter.

James Hirsen, J.D., M.A. in media psychology, is a media analyst, teacher of mass media and entertainment law at Biola University, and professor at Trinity Law School. Visit: Newsmax TV Hollywood:

http://www.youtube.com/user/NMHollywood.