When she let fly one particular line, there were shocked faces in her audience. Some just couldn't believe she'd had the audacity—especially during the height of Reagan's popularity—to say what she had said.

But say it she did, and at that moment I wanted to dance around a lot and maybe kiss her joyfully like a yappy little canine I know always laps up on me. Why so? Because Whoopie had given the right-wing pawn Republican president his just due for criminal foot-dragging while, early on in the epidemic, with no interested or sympathetic Reagan administration sentry (Surgeon General Koop being the embarrassing-to-Reagan exception) AIDS blithely ravaged the nation altogether unremarked. Finally on one fine April Fools Day, Ronnie thought he'd debut the word so that no one could say he'd never uttered one word. But that was about it. He said the "A" word.

Even the public pleading of Ronnie's son, Ron, Jr.— and even that son's five-year-long attempts to goad his dad into action had failed. He was the president who'd smiled absently--or was it forcefully?--while AIDS got a full head start.

Whoopie Goldberg knew that too. And she called the President on it, on the Mall's green carpet. I won't repeat here what she said It involved that F-word. Suffice it to say it was entirely appropriate to the occasion, just like almost anything this wonderful human being, Whoopie, says.

I say she's a Goddess. Buy her new AudioBook. In Whoopie's own voice hear her tell of growing up on the streets of New York City. Let her tell too of her mother's cares, and of her own. Nothing is better medicine than Whoopie's full-of-feeling or matter-of-fact delivery, and that's why the AudioBook is, in my opinion, what one needs to get the full impact—the tones with the ideas-- of what it means to wax human, to experience humanity. Yup, Whoopie is my kind of hoedown saint.

She's Americana incarnate. She's our National Elf, warm, mischievous, down-to-earth, people-centered.

Her first monologue in AudioBook is delivered, I'm sure, to make a philosophical point, namely that our bodies are naturally-functioning-when-full, and that any escapes from their interiors made in public--clearly audible sounds--are no reason we should butt headlong-to-bedlam. And anyway, in elevators there's nowhere to go. Whoopie knows.

Whoopie tells what it's like to live with a man, too. And how few men are able to leave a bathroom sink without sprinkled water drops everywhere. Worse, she even tells of upbraiding her boyfriend for peeing in her bathroom sink instead of walking an extra step to deposit as planned. "Hey, I have to wash my face in there!"

Unperturbed, the Man replies, "Rinse it out."

You can hear Whoopie's voice calling to you from across the store as you take her AudioBook into your hands. Her face is just staring out at you on the cover. Just the picture alone. No need for her name, which there isn't. It's just those Whoopie-wisdom eyes. I'm reminded of what Georgia O'Keefe replied to someone who asked why the painter hadn't signed her paintings.

"Would you sign your face?" she asked.

The cover reads: "Hey. Hey. You. Yeah. You. The one with the audiobook. I'm so glad you picked it up. I wrote and read it so you'd listen to it.

"Now, here's where I'm supposed to say all kinds of hip, Whoopie-esque stuff to get you to buy it. Picking it up is just the first step. Buying it—that's a whole other contract. So this is where we seal the deal, when I tell you in my own inimitable way how uproarious and provocative this AudioBook is, how out there, uncensored, and cutting edge and whatever else I can think to throw into the mix."

Whoopie knows, all right, how to tell good stories and good jokes. Her voice has a certain quality, like that of a favorite funny-lady aunt who always gets down and pegs matters squarely and without undue flustering. You get the straight goop from Whoopie, no doubt.

Or, maybe you'll laugh later if you don't get jokes pronto. Don't worry tho, it'll hit you later in the elevator like a loud . . . whatever.. it'll be loud. You'll think, that gal, that imp, Whoopie, she's really a walk in the park.

She knows, after all, how to turn one's waste products into philosophy, and that's no small alchemy. Lemonade from lemons are a kind of lovejuice.

P.S. Whoopie Goldberg is not her real name.