Is My Bow Too Big? How I Went From Saturday Night Live to the Tea Party (21 page)

Activist

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth
becomes a revolutionary act.”

–George Orwell

I
’m at a secret meeting in Los Angeles in 2007. In the last few years, this secret group has grown from two to over two thousand. At a big table, loving faces go around in a circle and take turns unloading private thoughts. This is invitation only; an outsider would be noticed. Conservatives are black-listed in Hollywood. We have to hide. Just like McCarthyism, but the opposite. I see Jon Voight. I see Pat Boone. It’s my turn to speak.

“I don’t know anything about politics, but I’m a Christian so I guess I’m conservative. When I turned eighteen, I asked my Dad who I should vote for and he said, ‘Anyone who has an R next to their name.’”

Everyone laughs.

“I said, ‘Why, are they Christians?’ Dad said, ‘No, but they are closer than the D’s.’”

I remember passing a TV once and seeing Clinton say smugly, “…it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” I did a double take and thought,
This country is being run by morons, I better get involved
. I asked my husband Paul—the police helicopter pilot and political science major—how to vote. He was chopping up his vegetables, as he does every day, after his five-mile run and two-hour weight lifting spree. He said, “You have to register.”

Mystified, I asked him where to go.

“The Boy Scouts Center.” I was thirty-seven.

The next secret meeting brings a more informed participant. I have been shown the documentary,
Blocking The Path to 9-11
. Cyrus Nowrasteh, writer of
The Path to 9-11,
gives a firsthand account of what happens when powerful, Progressive politicians rewrite history. The Clintons had a scene removed, the one that showed Bill in a bad light. Bill didn’t answer the phone when the military had Osama Bin Laden in their sights. The Clintons then had this documentary, years of Nowrastes’ work, shelved permanently. Nowrastes passionately testifies his experience like a Cuban political prisoner recounting the sudden loss of his home, business, and family to the whim of dictator.

A sudden rush brings a flashback. Dade Christian School, 1970. Cuban immigrants were flooding my hometown of Miami, risking their lives on rafts to escape communism. Red headed Miss McCoy, too pretty to be a Bob Jones graduate, tells our seventh grade class to read
1984
by George Orwell. The story is dark and sad—a prophetic fiction about a country that loses its freedom. Big concepts. Freedom is invisible, but you can feel when it’s leaving. Miss McCoy said that communism, which is atheistic, wants to take over America, but it cannot do so by force because of the 2nd amendment. It will weaken the U.S. from within, by the breakup of the family unit, and by sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. I get it.

I stroll past the pool of the Sportsman’s Lodge in Studio City. I wonder how to inform America not to vote for Hillary. The media won’t. She controls the media. Power is invisible, but you know it’s there. I wonder if I’m pulling off casual confidence in this group of informed, talented, and successful conservatives who have sparked my first interest in politics, when I overhear two men mumbling,

“He’s a Senator from Chicago.”

“Does he have a chance?”

“He’s left of Hillary.”

I quickly deduce:
Left of Hillary?! She’s a Socialist! W-w-what would that be? Communist!

I feel some freedom zapped from the air.

I’m handed a DVD titled
Hype
about Obama’s Chicago past. I watch it. I’m horrified. Orwell’s
1984
is here. I give a copy to my agent who sends me a nasty note. Why do people hate truth? Pamela Gellar says, “Truth is the new hate speech.”

A stormy, threatening cloud hovers over my country and only a handful notice it. We are stunned. We scour news channels for truth and find snippets on cable or talk radio, but not enough to see the real picture. People galumph around, oblivious to Marx’s shadow and the eerie groan of a dying Constitution. I find Glenn Beck and stand in front of his chalkboard each day until I’m late to pick up my daughter from school, lapping up facts and names, almost surpassing my husband’s knowledge of the political sciences: or, more accurately, schemes and corruptions. The maternal instinct to protect my young gives me a heavy resolve, a reckless strength, and a keen eye. My senses are on alert.
My children will not grow up in a Communist country.

I start reading about government and saturating my friends with my newfound knowledge. Robbie Curtis, a politically savvy gentleman (who already knows what the electoral college is, and that Congress is made up of 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 100 in the Senate, and that for a bill to become law it has to be ratified by both houses of Congress and signed by the President), says, “You’ve got the fire in your belly. You should go into politics.”

“Politics?”

The moment was similar to when my dad told me “actress” was the word for Julie Andrews. I hadn’t put the word “politics” together with “saving America” yet. Perhaps they have nothing to do with each other. But what other system do we have?

We are sitting in the lobby of the Hollywood Roosevelt on Hollywood Boulevard, discussing a pilot idea that involves Jessica Hahn from the Jim Bakker scandal and me selling my mom’s fudge on a reality TV show. We’ll call our production
What the Fudge?!
I have recently made friends with Hahn in Santa Clarita, where she occasionally goes bowling in a league with her father-in-law and my realtor Donna. When a fire licked near my Acton home, Hahn offered me a roof and bed at her place. I gratefully carried into her home my Bible, computer tower, three yapping dogs, (Buddy the Yorkie, Daisy the Maltese, and their baby, Peanut the Morkie), vaults of videos, photographs of my children’s childhoods, and my authentic lion rug. Funny what things you save when you are fleeing a fire.

It’s ironic that Jessica Hahn has helped me twice, when all I’ve done for her so far is “parody” her during the most difficult time of her life. It’s the essence of Christianity: forgiveness. I provided her the “honor” of being the butt of an
SNL
joke, and she provided me shelter from a fire.

As a
Saturday Night Live
cast member, I was always trying to think of something to write. Cast members were expected to write their own material, although there were twenty writers holed up in offices typing away. Christine Zander, a writer who rarely spoke to me, flapped a
People
magazine on my desk. “You should write this.” It was 1987, my second year on
SNL
. I quickly scanned the picture of a bikini-clad Jessica Hahn and the huge words “I AM NOT A BIMBO.” My mind clicked. In five minutes I had the gist of a song. I asked Greg Greenberg the receptionist, now a writer, for a few bimbo adjectives. For the first time in a year I had a good idea to submit to the read-through. Everyone loved it, except Lorne Michaels.

I confronted him, “Everyone loved it.”

“I don’t like the blues.”

Odd. His proudest jewels, Belushi and Ackroyd, did
The Blues Brothers
. Didn’t Lorne produce it?

“Have Cheryl change the music.”

I rushed to the music department where chain-smoking-Cheryl was practicing Beethoven. Her long ash never fell into the keys. Her one eye squinted so the smoke wouldn’t burn it. She grabbed my lyrics and in five minutes wrote a pop tune. I showed Lorne. He gave me the green light to do it at dress rehearsal where it would have its final audition before the live show. It was a hit.

So I did a semi-striptease on the Update Desk while singing
I Am Not a Bimbo
to Sting (our musical guest that week), Steve Martin (our host that week), and America. It killed.

Just because of the way I look,

Just because of what I wear,

Just because of how I look,

And how I fix my hair,

You think you can label me.

But don’t you dare,

’Cuz I am not a bimbo.

So I jiggle when I walk,

So I wiggle when I walk.

I got extra body fat,

Gonna call me “bimbo” just for that?

Just ’cause my voice is high,

And my attitude is light,

It doesn’t mean that I’m not serious,

I read Newsweek twice last night.

So, why should I be

The brunt of your jokes, your mockery,

When I am not a Bimbo?

Years later, I’m doing a small role on a
Married with Children
spin-off called
Unhappily Ever After.
The creator of both shows, Ron Leavitt, brings his girlfriend, Jessica Hahn, to the set dinner to meet me. She is a size zero and very loving. She seems fragile and vulnerable. I apologize for making fun of her on
SNL
and try to explain that I was expected to satirize people or end up fired. She is gracious and says that in the late 80’s she was so depressed she couldn’t eat, and she cried all day. Her privacy had been invaded by the worldwide press, and she was consequentially raped twice: once by a few sinful preachers, and then by the media. She said my little spoof of her made her laugh through her tears. But she may have just been trying to be nice. I have recently been satirized in the press, and although “imitation is the highest form of flattery,” it’s mean, and it hurts a little, especially when they bring your family into it. Jessica thinks her mother died of embarrassment, literally. After the Jim Bakker-Jessica Hahn scandal was exposed, her mom quit eating and she perished shortly after.

As 2007 turned into 2008, I splattered my web site with every new political truth I could scrounge up. I studied faces. Who were the enemies? Who were the allies? I scratched a fish in the sand. I put a Nobama bumper sticker on my car. I started losing friends. I started finding friends. I found the Tea Party.

I stood up at the next secret Hollywood conservative meeting and strummed a new song on my ukulele. I saw Gary Sinise chuckle while I sang:

People, look, we’ve got a problem,

Half of us have ignorance,

Maybe we can nudge them gently,

Truth can make the difference.

Truth is all we’ve got to stand on,

Seek it, find it, wear it well.

If we all believe the liars,

We could all end up in h*ll-o.

I posted Webster’s Dictionary’s definitions of capitalism, socialism, and communism on my website. And I posted this poem: