on Bush:
Before a recent showing of "West Side Story" at a Berkeley Rep donor appreciation night - attended by spy Steve Finacom - Rita Moreno described being invited to the White House in 2004 to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The ceremony was in the Gold Room, where she had performed during the Clinton administration. "When I came in knowing that that man was going to put a medal on me, it felt sad," said Moreno.

[Bush] approached, and "he said to me, 'Hey, Reets!' " He reminded her they'd seen each other only a few months before. She said she didn't remember, and he said her memory must be bad.

"I know I'm absent-minded," she thought, "but I never forget (donkey apertures, more or less). How could I have forgotten meeting this man?"

Bush pressed her, saying they'd met at the Kennedy Honors, and then she realized, "Oh, the Kennedy Honors! He thinks I'm Chita Rivera." She let it go. "I said to myself, 'Let him live in his dreams.' "