How dare you
Aretha Franklin fires back
Today’s letter comes to you on what would have been Aretha Franklin’s 80th birthday.
On 27th April 1993, at New York City’s Nederlander Theatre, the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, spent four hours sharing the stage with the likes of Elton John, Gloria Estefan, En Vogue, Bonnie Raitt, Smokey Robinson, P. M. Dawn, Rod Stewart, and others, in an AIDS benefit concert titled Aretha Franklin: Duets. An audience of 1200 people were lucky enough to be in the room that night, and ten days later, millions more watched when an edited hour-long special was broadcast on TV. Reviews were glowing; however, gossip columnist Liz Smith lowered the tone by observing, in print, that Franklin “must know she’s too bosomy to wear such clothing, but she just doesn’t care what we think, and that attitude is what separates mere stars from true divas.” A written response from Aretha Franklin soon arrived.
Liz Smith:
How dare you be so presumptuous as to presume you could know my attitudes with respect to anything other than music. Obviously I have enough of what it takes to wear a bustier and I haven’t had any complaints, I’m sure if you could you would. When you get to be a noted and respected fashion editor please let us all know.
Aretha Franklin
P.S. You are hardly in any position to determine what separates stars from divas since you are neither one or an authority on either.
BREAKING NEWS. As I type (12:43pm GMT on 25th March 2022), we’ve taken #984 orders through the Letters of Note shop since opening it in November 2020, and to mark the occasion, the 1000th order1 processed will be free, no matter how large2. My advice to all of you: place an enormous order and cross your fingers.
We’re currently getting between 5 and 10 orders per day, so I’m guessing the 1000th will arrive over the weekend. But I could be wrong.
It would be nice for the shop to somehow recognise the 1000th order and automatically charge £0 at checkout. However, sadly, I don’t have the brainpower necessary to implement such a swish trigger, so instead I’ll be manually refunding the total amount of said order. And don’t worry: I’ll let you all know how much that order comes to, after the fact (obviously). I know you’ll be on tenterhooks.
Perfect! What a star!