The Queen of Queens

Gaydars and dykelettes, Judy Tenuta loves you and wants you to have the right to marry. She also expects you to worship her. It's a small price to pay.
If you don't know who Judy Tenuta is, you're swine. Or, more specifically, "a mortal swine living under a rock" and "a big fat ignorant Ypsilanti toad."
Tenuta is, after all, the Goddess of the Universe. Of course, she's also the Princess of Panty Shields, the Duchess of Discipline, the Love Goddess, the Petite Flower, the Empress of Elvis Impersonators, Queen of Candy Pants, Diva to the Dykelettes and the Queen of Queens (not to be confused with "King of Queens," the CBS sitcom starring Kevin James. "I'm not fat enough for that yet," Tenuta says. "I have about 300 pounds to go before I get there. The Goddess cannot blimp out, no").
Her more pedestrian titles are stand-up comic and actress. She also plays a mean accordion.
When Tenuta speaks to BTL from her home in California she is naked, having just stepped out of the shower, and waiting for a Fed Ex package ("I love Fed Ex packages," she says) containing some new songs she mixed in Chicago.
Naked or not, Tenuta's on, her brain going a mile a minute. The Petite Flower flits from thought to thought faster than you can say, "Attention Butt-Pirates and Lesbetarians" (the title of her 1999 comedy CD, recorded live at a gay pride festival).
Modesty aside, she launches into a diatribe about the upcoming Presidential election.
"What am I going to do about this election?" she says. "This time we have to make sure Florida doesn't get to vote. Hello – not allowed to vote if you can't count."
She repeatedly refers to John Kerry as John Karaoke and shares a joke one of her fans sent her. "Dear Goddess," she reads, "What does John Kerry say to his wife Teresa Heinz if she's running behind him?" She pauses. "Hey, catch up." She laughs.
Referring to the Republican-backed group that's been airing ads discrediting Kerry's military service in Vietnam, Tenuta says, "I'm sick and tired of these Bushwackers trying to discolor John Kerry's record by saying, 'Oh, by the way, it really wasn't in the line of combat.' Listen you pigs, it's a lot better than the pig who's in office now who refused to do anything other than get drunk."
Tenuta is no fan of the current administration. "Can you believe this pig George W?" she asks. "He's so stupid he thought stem cell research was when Martha Stuart goes in her garden and cultivates bulbs."
Speaking of which, she says, Martha Stuart has been writing letters to her asking for advice on what to do in prison. Tenuta's written a new song for her.
But back to Bush, who Tenuta calls "the biggest mortal swine."
"And hello – he can't even read! I mean, what a troglodyte." She continues in a Texas accent, "I've got that Saddam and I'm gonna get that Osama and the best way for me to get him is to go fishing in my daddy's pool."
Her confidence in our country's current leader is shaky at best. "Why doesn't he just go with OJ and they'll go look for Osama and OJ's wife's killer together on a golf course?"
The Bush Administration's attack on marriage rights for gays and lesbians holds special ire for Tenuta.
"Hello – of course I want the gaydars to get married," she says. "First of all, all these straight people that are married, most of them are miserable anyway. But I think, you know, gay people would make it more fun. They deserve to have whatever they want."
Tenuta once asked her mother, a strict Catholic in her 70's, what she thought about the push to ban marriage for gays, and her mother's responded, "'They're stupid because it doesn't affect them anyway. Let the gay men and the gay women do what they want.' Which is true," Tenuta continues. "How does that affect George W., the fruitcake? He's just trying to keep his right-wing-wacko-NRA-white-hooded-conservative-Christians happy."
This goes for Dick Cheney, too. "He's a toad," she says, "You have to remember he needs to get votes for George W., their huge voting base in the right wing Bible thumping religious right and there's a lot of those people and those go hand in hand with the NRA rednecks, so he knows that even though his daughter is gay that would be a big red flag for the right wing wackos so they would be, 'Oh, we can't vote for him.'"
Tenuta admits she doesn't know who they'd vote for instead, as the Bush Administration is pretty much their only option.
"They're against anything progressive. They don't believe in evolution. Hello – look at [Bush], the back of his skull is still trying to get a curve in it. They don't believe in stem cell research which would help so many people. I mean, please. And they're killing the environment, and of course they don't believe in gay rights and as I said it's so stupid. They act as if it takes away straight rights. It doesn't affect them at all."
If anything, she says, it would help the straight people who put kids up for adoption because there would be more couples to adopt them. "Better for kids to have parents than end up in an orphanage."
What it comes down to, of course, is stupidity.
"There are a lot of stupid people in this country, ok?" Tenuta says. "Hello – I mean, you don't blame McDonalds for getting fat. Hello – you have the right to close your cake hole. You can't blame that on McDonalds."
It's this brand of stupidity that's standing in the way of equal marriage.
"Eventually they're gonna have to realize that there's gotta be the right for gays to marry and have all the privileges and all the horrible things that go with it," she says. "Like you have to sit there with the pig and fight over the remote."