Ape Culture - Celine Dion to Leavfe Rene for Strom Thurmond

Celine and Strom agree on most things, but differ
when assessing the dimensions of Strom's manhood

"Yes, it's true," says the silky-throated pop diva, her French Canadian head angled coyly atop that trademark alarmingly thin neck, "Rene (Angelil, her manager/ svengali/soon-to-be-ex-husband) and I will always be friends, but my heart belongs to Strom."

As she picks distractedly at a single strand of balsamic vinegar soaked watercress, Celine's slightly mismatched Canuck eyes glaze over mawkishly and for a moment I'm afraid she might sing or that she's having a stroke. But no, she's just...thinking. "It's so hard, you see? 'Aving a baby makes you grow up, eh? Rene Jr, he needs a strong male role model. Rene Sr., he was my life, but he was only a generation older zan me. Strom... well, I had no idea there were such old men still alive and, you know, not yet...mummified? Is that the word I want in English? Like Lenin's corpse?"

"Shaw izza pitty lituh thang, in' she?" says the 118 year-old senator from South Carolina, listing dangerously against a young aide. "Wha she aniwayz, a gran' niece uh somesuch? So skinny an all she look like she been in a Gaw damn consuhtation camp or somewhat." The chemically-unbalanced Yukon songstress dimples prettily and giggles like a hypoglycemic schoolgirl, dandling Rene Jr. and absently caressing the IV stand she recently had engraved for her new love. "Who the hell bought a damn piglet inna mah chamebuhs?!" shrieks the impossibly ancient legislator, his cloudy, near useless eyes twinkling. "Gitta gaw damn dose a' trickyanostis offana thang like that!"

News of the North of the Border Pop Pap Peddling Jingle Belter's disturbing fixation couldn't come at a better time for her career, what with no new recordings, sales of her autobiography Celine Dion: My Story, My Dream flagging and it's sequel Celine Dion: My Pathology, My Appalling, Near Necrophylic Fetish due from Harper Collins later this month. "You should have seen the first draft she sent us!" senior editor Robert Wilson openly wept in a recent phone interview. "The legible parts read like one of those movies you rent at a motel! And it was in crayon!" adding later "I'm not kidding!"

"I don't care about the publicity, good, horrible or even bad" responds the Steisandesque, Québécois loony-tune, gazing fondly at the condensation gathering on a small pocket mirror she holds beneath her Methuselaic beau's nose. "Some of the press, they think I do this just to draw attention, they say 'how can she do this to Rene Sr.?', or 'Twice in a row with the old guys, what is she, like bongo?', but you know what I say? You have to follow your heart. And my sales are just fine already thank you. I just sold the rights to my recordings to your CIA for them to play when they surround dictators or cult leaders or something."

"Sheeza fi-crackuh, ain' she? Made me uppa shiny new setta chopmers so's a kin smahl at Ladybird come the nawguhration!" says Thurmond cackling fondly or perhaps choking. "Me an this little filly heah, few years down a road we gonna ree-tie-ah, open us up a communation bait shop fillin' station with Barry Goldwater, kaytuh to a scloosive clahn-tell!"

Then quietly, lovingly, for Celine's ears only; "Segugated. yunnastan' what I'm sayin'."