Let me tell you about Deb Messing

Quelle cunt!

Coke Mom Cunt!

If Mother Teresa had had a sitcom that appealed to gay men, she'd have been Deb Messing.

[quote] If Mother Teresa had had a sitcom that appealed to gay men, she'd have been Deb Messing.

No. She'd have been The Flying Nun.

Deb put her shell-like ear to the woman's mouth, inadvertently smearing her earring with blood, and listened to the old woman's wheezing Creole. The expression on Deb's face changed from puzzlement to incredulity to horror.

"Stop!" she yelled to the Guardsmen atop the rubble. "This woman's grandchild is buried up there!" she told them, pointing to a precipice of gnarled rebar and crumbling concrete.

The young Guardsman who was helping us was a towheaded Southerner, probably no more than eighteen. "We can't, ma'am," he told her.

Deb would have none of it. "She says he's alive; she can feel his cries in her heart!"

"Ma'am," the Guardsman told us, "it's not safe up there, not even for the dogs." "Then I'LL do it!"

Quick as a wink and before any of us could stop her, Deb was scaling up the face of the rubble like a mountain goat, her Tevas barely finding purchase on one crumbling piece of cement before she shinnied to the next. (Later we would find that mountain climbing had been Deb's passion as a teenager.)

The Guardsmen stood mute and unbelieving, but the towhead found his voice: "Ranger!" he cried. "Help her!"

The biggest of the German shepherds raced after Deb, catching up to her just as she reached the spot the old woman had described. Deb and Ranger fell to digging, the animal with his paws and Deb with her hands, while we could only watch from the ground and pray.

After a few minutes, Deb staggered to her feet, holding a tiny object in her bloodied hands. "Jean-Phillip - pe!" she yelled to us. "And he's alive! Il est vivant!"

The most hardened Guardsman could not hold back his tears as Deb descended from that pile of rubble containing so many corpses of the young, pressing the tiny miracle to her breast as Ranger led the way. When she finally reached the ground, I held out my hands for the baby, but Deb shook her head.

"He needs her touch," she said. "And she needs his."

With that tender smile I had seen in "The Starter Wife," she placed the infant in the arms of his grandmother, where he worked his tiny fists for a moment before letting loose a cry in the destroyed streets of Port-au-Prince.

"The kid's got some lungs on him," said Red. "That's the sound of a healthy baby."

Deb put her finger to his lips. "No," she said. "That's the sound of LIFE."

As the other medics turned their attention to the blood and glass in Deb's feet (she had lost her Tevas on the downhill climb), I looked at the old Haitian woman on the stretcher. With one hand, she pressed her grandson to her heart; the fingers of the other hand worked an invisible rosary.

Her parched mouth moved in silent prayer, and I knelt next to her to dampen her cracked lips with a few drops of water from my canteen when she suddenly grabbed my sleeve with a strength belying her advanced years. At that moment, the blood left her face, and I knew we had lost her; she had held on in hopes of an angel saving the life of her grandson, and now that God had done His work, she was ready to meet Him.

I bent down to moisten her lips once again, and in a palsied wheeze, she uttered her last words:

"Qui etait cette cunt?"

Oops -- missed the beginning of that story...

Let me tell you about Deb Messing.

In early January, I had just returned to the States from Victoria, where I had been immunizing some of the indigenous tribes there in the grueling Australian midsummer heat. I'd been home barely a week when the earthquake struck Haiti, collapsing building and killing thousands, and within the day I was headed back to the airport -- destination, Port-au-Prince.

Commercial flights were, you may remember, were unavailable for days afterward. I was standing in LAX, cursing my stupidity, when a woman tapped me on the shoulder. "I noticed your bag," she said (I was carrying my Medecins Sans Frontieres kit). "Are you trying to get to Haiti?"

The woman told me she had chartered a Cessna and hired a pilot skilled enough to land it in a small parking lot if necessary. "We have one more seat," she said, insisting I come with her.

There was a brief argument on the tarmac -- apparently Anderson Cooper had been promised a seat, but my mysterious benefactor said medical help was more important and insisted I take his place. When I boarded the small plane, I found it filled with a veritable United Nations of aid workers, all as somber as I.

Once we were in the air, her warmth and humor quickly put an end to our initial shock. She introduced herself. Though she was obviously well-off, said the biggest regret of her life was dropping out of medical school just short of getting her degree. (She had supplied portable DVD players under each seat, and it wasn't until the flight was underway and I was engrossed in a double feature of her films "The Women" and "The Starter Wife" that I realized she was a film actress.)

The devastation in Haiti was beyond description. We had to land in Cite Soleil a few miles outside the city and take a Jeep down a rutted road, where we came across a roadblock of armed guerrillas that terrified us all, but Deb took them aside and conducted negotiations in perfect Haitian Creole. (The DVD players from the plane flight came in handy as barter, and they allowed us to pass.)

There were so many buildings collapsed in the city center we didn't know where to begin. We set to work in a pile of rebar and concrete, where a team of National Guardsmen was scaling the rubble with scent-rescue K-9s. When a dog would alert to someone trapped below, the National Guard would excavate the site, and if the patient showed any sign of life, the Guardsmen would carry them to us on a makeshift stretcher and we would begin triage there, in the middle of the filthy Avenue John Brown. (Deb was a great help here, too, holding the patients' hands and singing to them softly; her husky contralto was perfectly suited to "La vie en rose" and brought a tear to the eye of even some hardened rescuers.)

As the day went on, fewer and fewer patients were being brought to us and the rescue K-9s, sadly, were only uncovering corpses -- and small ones, covered in concrete dust, their mouths open in a silent scream. We realized, to our horror, we were excavating a day care or elementary school.

I was setting the crushed leg of one old woman who was hysterical with shock, eyes rolling back in her head, babbling. I tried to hush her, but Deb stopped me:

How wonderful...even MORE mentally ill ramblings!

Let me tell you about Deb Messing.

As Katrina roared toward New Orleans, more than a million people fled the area, but 29 of the city's littlest, most sickly babies were left to ride out the storm in University Hospital with Deb Messing. Many, born prematurely, were too weak to make the trip out. Deb’s job, some would describe as Herculean, was to make sure they all stayed alive. That we all stayed alive.

The horrors began the first day when the staff heard that the levees had been breached. "People got really scared and thought they were going to drown," said Deb, a volunteer who I discovered was in town visiting a friend. "I wasn't scared. I had been in touchy situations in Haiti and Darfur, but instead of machete toting rebels, we had water. And lots of it."

The staff was getting calls from members of their families who were stuck in attics as the water was rising. Some wanted to leave any way possible--and take their tiny charges with them. Deb Messing went from group to group, telling the frightened nurses that they would get out "when it was safe. When it was safe." But she too was worrying--about her husband and child, whom she had not heard from who stayed behind in New York.

Katrina posed an extraordinary challenge, isolating Deb, hospital staff and their charges for five harrowing days. Without power, the incubators had stopped working, so Deb had no choice but to carry the babies in her arms most of the time to keep them warm. For once in her life, Deb was grateful for the extra room in her bra. "Sometimes you have to roll up your capris and open your heart," she said to me, and I wept.

With no electricity and the backup generators flooded, the staff got news from the hospital's lone ham radio. At one point, a helicopter rescue was planned with a pickup point atop Tulane University Hospital three blocks away. Deb Messing gathered up her courage and led a bunch of desperate nurses carrying babies and boarded rowboats --respirating the sickest ones by "hand bagging," a method of forcing air into the lungs that Deb had taught them that morning, just in case. Just in case.

But the helicopter was commandeered for another mission, and Deb and the nurses returned with their swaddled patients. "We shall overcome," Deb reassured the party and led the nurses back, wading through the hip-deep water. "The staff was just emotionally drained. They're crying and upset as they came back," said Messing. "I wish they could perk up," she confessed to me, "pretend for the moment that they had some hope, that all wasn't lost, pretend for babies. Pretend for life."

She walked the units reassuring the nurses. She told me, "They needed to look in my face and see that it was going to be all right. This was the most important role of my life. I told them our No. 1 focus is our patients. Those teeny, tiny, veiny patients. We don't want to rush out of here and go drown and die in the process. That would be horrible and unfortunate."

Deb Messing was near exhaustion, having had no sleep most of the week and eating sunflower seeds she fished out of a vending machine. Yet she took on more duties, overseeing nurses in other areas of the hospital, all in the name of service and compassion. On what turned out to be their last night, Deb successfully delivered a 23-week-old preemie and even BBQd the placenta with a Bic lighter. "There is nothing she can't do," a nurse sighed, "except empty a bedpan."

The next day, they were finally evacuated. All the babies were fine. "We don't feel like heroes," said Deb "We feel like humanity."

Then, standing off to side, another nurse quietly added, "We just wanted our babies to go home alive and be reunited with their parents. And we wanted that crazy cunt with the hair to go back to New York."

Let me tell you about Deb Messing.

As Katrina roared toward New Orleans, more than a million people fled the area, but 29 of the city's littlest, most sickly babies were left to ride out the storm in University Hospital with Deb Messing. Many, born prematurely, were too weak to make the trip out. Deb’s job, some would describe as Herculean, was to make sure they all stayed alive. That we all stayed alive.

The horrors began the first day when the staff heard that the levees had been breached. "People got really scared and thought they were going to drown," said Deb, a volunteer who I discovered was in town visiting a friend. "I wasn't scared. I had been in touchy situations in Haiti and Darfur, but instead of machete toting rebels, we had water. And lots of it."

The staff was getting calls from members of their families who were stuck in attics as the water was rising. Some wanted to leave any way possible--and take their tiny charges with them. Deb Messing went from group to group, telling the frightened nurses that they would get out "when it was safe. When it was safe." But she too was worrying--about her husband and child, whom she had not heard from who stayed behind in New York.

Katrina posed an extraordinary challenge, isolating Deb, hospital staff and their charges for five harrowing days. Without power, the incubators had stopped working, so Deb had no choice but to carry the babies in her arms most of the time to keep them warm. For once in her life, Deb was grateful for the extra room in her bra. "Sometimes you have to roll up your capris and open your heart," she said to me, and I wept.

With no electricity and the backup generators flooded, the staff got news from the hospital's lone ham radio. At one point, a helicopter rescue was planned with a pickup point atop Tulane University Hospital three blocks away. Deb Messing gathered up her courage and led a bunch of desperate nurses carrying babies and boarded rowboats --respirating the sickest ones by "hand bagging," a method of forcing air into the lungs that Deb had taught them that morning, just in case. Just in case.

But the helicopter was commandeered for another mission, and Deb and the nurses returned with their swaddled patients. "We shall overcome," Deb reassured the party and led the nurses back, wading through the hip-deep water. "The staff was just emotionally drained. They're crying and upset as they came back," said Messing. "I wish they could perk up," she confessed to me, "pretend for the moment that they had some hope, that all wasn't lost, pretend for babies. Pretend for life."

She walked the units reassuring the nurses. She told me, "They needed to look in my face and see that it was going to be all right. This was the most important role of my life. I told them our No. 1 focus is our patients. Those teeny, tiny, veiny patients. We don't want to rush out of here and go drown and die in the process. That would be horrible and unfortunate."

Deb Messing was near exhaustion, having had no sleep most of the week and eating sunflower seeds she fished out of a vending machine. Yet she took on more duties, overseeing nurses in other areas of the hospital, all in the name of service and compassion. On what turned out to be their last night, Deb successfully delivered a 23-week-old preemie and even BBQd the placenta with a Bic lighter. "There is nothing she can't do," a nurse sighed, "except empty a bedpan."

The next day, they were finally evacuated. All the babies were fine. "We don't feel like heroes," said Deb "We feel like humanity."

Then, standing off to side, another nurse quietly added, "We just wanted our babies to go home alive and be reunited with their parents. And we wanted that crazy cunt with the hair to go back to New York.

Let me tell you about Deb Messing.

A few years ago, my church took in several dozen elderly women who had been left destitute by Hurricane Katrina. They had lost husbands, children, grandchildren, their homes, and whatever meager possessions they had managed to accumulate during their lives. They had nothing. NOTHING.

Except cancer. Yes. They had all been evacuated on a school bus out of New Orleans after spending eight days on the roof of the sweltering cancer center where they had expected to spend their last meager days. Eye cancer, spinal cancer, and one poor soul actually had molecular cancer. Can you imagine?

Well, as you can imagine, our church was overwhelmed caring for these poor dear ladies. We spent weeks trying to make them comfortable, but their spirits were flagging, and frankly so were ours. We didn't know what to do.

And then one morning a huge tour bus pulled up in front of our tiny church and out stepped Deb Messing. And behind her came Emeril Lagasse, Paul Prudhomme, Harry Connick Jr., a marching band, and the best New Orleans gospel choir you ever heard. The band was playing, and the choir was singing, and Deb Messing just marched up to the tiniest old lady in a wheelchair and said "I hear someone could use a little Mardi Gras."

Well, you never saw such a show as Deb Messing put on that day. Emeril and Paul Prudhomme got to work whipping up a Cajun feast in our church kitchen while Harry Connick sat down at our little piano and Deb struck a torch to "Porgy, You Is My Man." When she was done, she launched into a little more operetta, a few show tunes, and by the time she was crooning "That Old Rugged Cross," pressing those old women's faces one by one into her bosom, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

When the show was over, we sat down to the most delicious feast of crawfish etouffee and black-eyed peas that you'd ever tasted, and Deb disappeared for a few minutes. No sooner did Miss Mamie ask "Where did that white girl go?" through the hole in her throat than Deb was there at her side, wearing a pair of saucy overalls and carrying a claw hammer. "I've got one more surprise for you," she said, and she took us all about behind the church...

...and there stood Ty Pennington and his crew. While we were eating, they had constructed a beautiful replica of a French Quarter home, with balconies and hanging flowerpots and a swing on the front porch, a place where these dear old women could live out the rest of their days.

At that point none of us could contain our tears, and Deb insisted on being the one who wheeled each old woman inside the house where each one could finally find rest and never want for anything ever again.

Before long, it was just me and Miss Mamie on the rolling front lawn, and that dear old woman pulled me down so I could hear her wheezing question through the hole in her palsied throat:

"Who was that cunt?"

Let me tell you more about Deb Messing

I used to volunteer at a Sudanese school for blind children with cancer. Yes, blind with cancer. Eye cancer.

One day the door opened and in came Deb Messing - she had heard about the school from Charlie Rose, when the two had attended a lecture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on African maskmasking and had run into an Afrikaaner Doctor without Borders. (Deb, as it turns out, speaks several languages.)

Well, she showed up with a copy of the Rodgers & Hart songbook tucked under one arm, a bag of candy in the other arm, and Billy Stritch coming in behind her with a baby grand on a dolly. Debra embraced the children, some of whom had cancer dripping from their sightless eyes, and proceeded to put on a "one-woman Broadway-style show" in that malarial hut we called a schoolroom.

When it was over, she kissed each child tenderly and presented each one with an iPod filled with the great music of the world. While they were squealing with delight, she took me aside, produced a checkbook, and wrote a sum that enabled corneal transplants for all the children AND endowed us with a new building that made Oprah's school look like an outhouse.

And after she left...I thought my heart was going to break when one of the smallest children looked up at me and said, with tears in her sightless eyes: "Who was that cunt?

Thanks for the memories of a hilarious thread from days gone by....particularly the "eye cancer"!

Has our Deb ever tackled the heartbreak of psoriasis?

I saw her walking in the streets of NYC nearly a decade ago. She's really pretty in person.

She is really annoying on every level.

She's a horrible person.

We always tease her about being so self absorbed and making news events all about her on Twitter. (she does the I can't breathe!!! stuff whenever there is a bad event)

Anyway I noticed on the episode I watched the other day when Rosario has a heart attack, Grace is in the waiting room and thinks she's having one too because of pain in her right arm. Will then tells her if she was having a heart attack it would be her left arm that would hurt and that she needs to not make everything about her.

I sort of felt like maybe the writers read the DL!

I appreciate her good aim.

[quote] The band was playing, and the choir was singing, and Deb Messing just marched up to the tiniest old lady in a wheelchair and said "I hear someone could use a little Mardi Gras."

Of all the great sentences in the great "Let me tell you abut Deb Messing" posts, this was by far my favorite.

The author is a person of genius.

I know some women who are doing this help Africa thing where they also go and get photographed with all the poor little children. (I was the person who started the should I go to a fundraiser on DL last month---I didn't go.)

It is an odd thing.It is like they want to create this image of how they are helping the down trodden of Africa, which is fine but the self congradulations and facebook photos seem odd.

Plus they have to fly there. I felt like telling the woman I know why don't you just sound the thousand dollars you paid for your flight to the kids too. They could use that more than a photo op from you.

I love this thread!

Debra Messing is a beautiful and inspiring woman.

I "heart" the Deb Messing troll!

Delicious trollery, 10/10.