It started out just like any other celebrity profile: A long drive up a Malibu driveway. An interview filled with softball questions (and the now-obligatory #MeToo comment). A photo shoot in front of a wall of awards. Then, cozied up with her two Coton du Tulears in front of a sweeping Pacific vista that has probably long since lost its wonder, Barbra Streisand cracked open a door to the futuristic reality of the ultra-wealthy, where life itself can be bought and sold like so many plastic trinkets: Caption the photo “Send In The Clones,” she told Variety’s photographer.
What?
Yes, gentle reader: Barbra Streisand cloned her dog. You see, last year Streisand’s beloved dog Samantha took ill, and because she has more money to spend on her dogs than most of us make in a year, before Samantha left this earthly realm Streisand had cells collected from the dog’s mouth and stomach. She used those cells to clone her dog into two other dogs, which she named Miss Scarlet and Miss Violet after the different colored shirts she would put on them to tell them apart, because, again, they are clones. She also bought a third dog named Miss Fanny, which is the cousin of her original dog, raising the question of why one would pay more than $100,000 to clone a dog when there are other dogs whose existence does not defy God and nature that look just like them. See if you can guess which one is not a clone:
We don’t know either, but it’s probably the one that is trying to escape from the basket because it still has the wild blood of its ancient ancestors pulsing through its little doggie veins. Streisand is apparently not the only obscenely rich person to clone a dog: As Page Six points out, media billionaire Barry Diller and his fashion designer wife Diane von Furstenberg did the same for their Jack Russell terrier Shannon in 2016.
Class war considerations aside, probably the most annoying thing about this story is that we’re forced to side with PETA on this one, as the animal rights organization released a statement earlier today saying that—putting the “breeder vs. shelter dog” debate aside for a moment—cloning an animal only reproduces their physical characteristics, not their personality, so you might as well just adopt a dog who looks like your dearly departed doggo friend. And we really hate having to agree with PETA on things.