A View From a Broad by Bette Midler

but I had no choice. As part of my show I had been singing the following little ditty:
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    Hitler had only one big ball.
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    Goering had two, but they were small.
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    Himmler had something sim’lar,
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    But Goebbels
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    Had no balls
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    At all!
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    Well! What was I to do? Leave it in? Take it out? I thought about it and thought about it. Would my leaving it in be considered a hostile gesture? Was it a hostile gesture? Did I feel hostile? Or would the fact that I felt free to sing it in Germany be taken as a sign that I believed the “new” Germans could deal with it because they weren’t responsible? That bygones were bygones? Then again, did I really believe that bygones should be bygones? I didn’t know what to do.
    I talked about it with a few Germans I came in contact with who could speak English. They all seemed to feel that it would be best not to sing it. The audience was coming to have a good time. Why bring up a bad dream?
    Well, that seemed reasonable enough to me. I resolved to leave Hitler out of it.
    But as fate would have it, as soon as I hit the stage, nervous as a cat and ruled, as always, by some imp of the perverse, the first thing that came out of my mouth was—you guessed it—“Hitler had only one big ball, etc., etc., etc.”
    No one was more shocked than I. But once I started, what could I do but go on? And once I went on, I went on and on. And not alone. I had the audience sing it with me. First slow. Then at a brisker tempo. Three thousand Germans and one very freaked-out Jewess singing “Hitler Had Only One Big Ball” at the top of their lungs right in the middle of Munich.
    I still have no idea how the Germans felt about it. Surprisingly, the reviews never mentioned it, nor did any of the Germans I spoke to after the show. I guess they were just being kind. Whichis probably more than I had been in singing it. It was so odd. But then, Germany was odd in many ways.
    I’m used to attracting some fairly outrageous crowds—in fact, I pride myself on it—but I have never seen anything as extreme as what I got in Germany.
    I think the women were even more amazing than the men. More severe, and certainly much tougher. With platinum-blond ducktail hairdos, long, long squared-off nails and no expression whatsoever. Someone once told me that the bear is the most dangerous animal of all because he never changes his expression. So you never know if he’s happy or about to attack. I thought a lot about that in Germany. It’s true that in the theater they were very polite. They laughed loudly, applauded warmly. But as soon as the outburst was over, their faces would return to mannequin-like composure. Very Helmut Newton.
    The men tended to have a bit more expression, but also a lot more leather. And they came in irons of every variety, from metal-studded chokers to handcuffs. Sitting in my dressing room and listening to the clanking of metal as the audience came in, I thought I was about to perform for a chain-link fence.
    I must admit it was a little alarming. Group conformity scares the pants off me because it’s so often a prelude to cruelty towards anyone who doesn’t want to—or can’t—join the Big Parade. I saw a particularly horrible example of that when I was growing up in Hawaii, and I’ve never been able to get it out of my mind.
    “. . . platinum-blond ducktail hairdos, and no expression whatsoever. Very Helmut Newton.”
    There was a boy in our sophomore class named Angel Wong. Even in Hawaii, where intermarriage is so common, a Chinese-Puerto Rican was an unusual hybrid. Unfortunately, the combination plate that was Angel Wong wasn’t exactly the best of both worlds. Angel was about four feet six inches tall and painfully skinny. He had huge black completely crossed eyes and quite an overbite. Furthermore, one leg was slightly shorter than the other, so he walked with a strange little limp that made his head bob up and down like a chicken’s. Angel, in other