Barbra Streisand has acquired a huge audience of adoring fans over the decades, but she ran into a bit of static at her Oct. 9th concert in her hometown of New York.

Streisand, who has long been known for her left-leaning political views, included a skit in her Madison Square Garden concert in which the singer carried on a conversation with an impersonator pretending to be president George Bush. The skit portrayed Bush as a bumbling dolt, and both jeers and applause were heard throughout the crowd. At one point Streisand asked the crowd to be polite during the skit, but when one heckler persisted she responded, "Shut the %&@# up! Shut up if you can't take a joke!"

Ah, ya gotta love a native New Yorker who gives as well as she takes when playing before her hometown crowd. Although Bush is not popular in New York City, long a heavily democratic town, perhaps even Streisand's liberal admirers thought the skit went on too long. And the Bush character reportedly sang a song as well, which must have really frustrated an audience that had paid as much as $750 to hear her sing on what is her first concert appearance in NYC in six years. Streisand later apologized for her outburst.

No word if the bush skit will remain part of the act for her next concert at the Garden, or if it will be included in later Streisand shows.

Appropriately, perhaps, one of the songs she performed last night was an old standard of hers, "Don't Rain on My Parade."