Is My Bow Too Big? How I Went From Saturday Night Live to the Tea Party (22 page)

The Coyote

Walking my fluffy little dogs up the canyon

I’m wondering, “Why can’t we all just get along?”

I’m suddenly stopped

By a brave and menacing coyote.

He wants to eat my dogs.

I raise my arms to flap him away.

He looks me in the eye.

I flap again and scream.

He slowly and reluctantly saunters south.

He looks back one last time,

The devil in his eye.

And there is the answer to my question.

Suddenly, I was giving my first political speech for the Hollywood Congress of Republicans at Los Arcos in Burbank, across the street from NBC’s
Tonight Show
. I had memories of this place. I saw cocaine for the first time there. My director, a man, was in the ladies’ restroom lifting a fingernail-full of white powder to his nose while staring in the mirror with a big, carnival grin on his face. I spent eighteen magical nights across the street on
The Tonight Show
with Johnny Carson. Olive Avenue is where I took my Maltese to the vet, my daughter to the doctor, where I rode horses, and where I took limos (crowded with adrenaline, friends, and giggle) home from NBC. Now, I’m reading
Leviticus 26
to a roomful of empathetic eyes. How things change.

I see a video camera and request my speech
not
be put on the internet: the lighting is bad and I’m having a fat day. Then, I spin around and approach the sweet man with the camera. “I’m sorry. You
can
put it out there. Ca-reer, Ca-shmeer. No one will have a career when Obamunism takes over. How many sit-coms come out of China, Russia and Cuba? Am I right?”

My agent forwards my hate-mail to me. At Starbucks a stranger with a mean face asks me my home address. My neighbor, a Jewish lawyer, says proudly, “I voted Republican my whole life, but now I’m voting for Obama!”

I ask, “Why?”

He says emphatically, “Because he’s black!”

My face gimps up. I look in his eyes. “Isn’t that the most racist thing you could do? Vote for someone based on their skin color?”

He shrugs, smiling.

I shake my head.

Johnny Crawford commiserates with me. I only see Johnny once every five years now, but somewhere around 9/11 Johnny became a conservative, and now we have more in common. Johnny was on the
O’Reilly Show
recently, and I asked him, “You have his phone number?”

I called the
O’Reilly Show
and said, “I noticed that you always have the same two people representing Hollywood Conservatives. I know that my career isn’t so hot at the moment, but if you ever need another token conservative, I’m available.” They booked me.

Driving to the taping, my husband chided, “Now be careful. Don’t sound like a crazy person.”

I looked at him frustratingly. Nowadays, telling the truth makes you “an insane person.” People can’t handle the truth—it’s too ugly. Paul’s motto is “I want to go through life invisible, and when I die, no one even knows I was here.” My motto in life is, “I W
ILL
N
OT
B
E
I
GNORED
!” So here we two are, driving to the
Fox News Los Angeles
affiliate to argue over what sentence I will get to squeeze into the
O’Reilly Show
.

“O’Reilly interrupts everyone you know,” warns Paul.

“I know. I watch him every day. I’ve decided that since I’ll only get to say one sentence, the most powerful impact I can make would be to say Obama is a communist. Otherwise, there are too many issues to contend with. That is the best way to sum up the whole problem we are facing right now.”

Paul almost flips out of his seat. “Don’t you dare say that! People will think you’re nuts!”

“But it’s true.”

Paul is speechless.

I tell O’Reilly Obama is a Communist and O’Reilly mocks me. Three years later, many fact-filled books like Aaron Klein’s
The Manchurian President
, Dinesh D’Souza’s
The Roots of Obama’s Rage
, and Trevor Loudon’s
Barack Obama and The Enemies Within
prove I was right and O’Reilly was wrong.

I watched the TV minute by minute on election night. When Obama won, I wanted to slit my wrists. Instead, I said a bad word and sobbed. I knew life in America as we knew it would never be the same again. I would have to become politically involved. And I hate politics. I would have to leave my selfish lifestyle to fight for freedom and for my children, who couldn’t understand what was happening yet. Now on my To-Do List it would say:

1. Pray and Read Bible

2. Lose ten pounds

3. “Kiss” Husband

4. Be Good Mom

5. Answer 7,567 emails

6. Save America.

Getting a sit-com wasn’t even on the list. Somewhere around this time I heard Rush Limbaugh give a speech at CPAC. I was clapping and crying alone in the living room. I didn’t even know what CPAC was, but Rush’s words were after my own heart. I had to learn how to communicate what I believed in. I had so much to learn…

Tony Katz sent me an email asking me to speak at the first Los Angeles Tea Party on Santa Monica Pier. It was February, 2009. I had nothing to say except to read the definitions of
capitalism
,
socialism
, and
communism
from the
Webster’s Dictionary
.

I was so scared to go to a protest. All of us were. But we saw no alternative. I thought there might be gunfire or police. Luckily there was nothing, not even media. There was only one news camera there, and the twenty-five-year-old reporter looked at my sign and asked, sincerely, “What’s wrong with Socialism?” Wow. I didn’t know where to start answering her question. Socialism is the opposite of freedom? Is that the quick answer?

Now I’m standing on the steps of city hall in Pasadena, my favorite place. I’m at a podium with a flag in my hair. There is a small crowd. A few paid union types try to protest our protest. One is drunk. He heckles Breitbart, only to get blown away by the rumpled brainiac. We have handmade signs. We are shy. But we cannot sit at home. We try to give the hippies running this country a little competition. We are roaring. We’re politely roaring.

There is a deep bond between strangers who share a conviction. And urgency lives here.

Obama’s “Christianity” is fake. I am onto him. Most people aren’t aware, because they aren’t Bible scholars. They can’t detect the inconsistencies because they don’t know the Truth. But I can. I’ve studied the Bible for fifty-two years. When Obama publicly said, “All religions are the same”—that was a dead giveaway. A Christian would never say that. Scripture says Jesus is the only way to salvation. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6).

Obama does not consider Scripture absolute truth
or
the Word of God. When Obama twists Scripture to fit his Marxism, saying that the verse “To whom much is given, much is required,” means the “redistribution of wealth,” I know Obama has not studied the Bible.

We know a person is a Christian by their behavior and choices. Obama fought for “partial birth abortion,” which means that if an innocent baby accidentally lives through an abortion, the baby should be killed. Obama said he wouldn’t want his daughter to be “punished” by a pregnancy (Psalm 139?). He supports homosexual marriage and open homosexuality in the military (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13; Gen. 13:13; Romans 1:24-32). His actions are the opposite of Biblical values. I don’t resent that Obama is lost. I pray for him. I resent that he lies about it for political reasons.

I can’t remember where I got Hannity’s phone number, but I offered my services to him. His shoes were shiny, his grooming immaculate, and the rest of him was made of pure kindness—a true gentleman and a hero of patriotism. I waved my black leather Bible devotional at the end of the show and said, “This is the answer to our problems.” Maybe that’s why I wasn’t asked back. Even conservatives are politically correct these days. And political correctness is a fancy word for censorship which is the death of free speech.

One morning in 2008, I was in Burbank listening to Adam Corolla. I was driving Aubrey and her straight-A friend Roddy McCloud to Village Christian, when Roddy said, “You don’t listen to Laura?”

“Who’s that?” I asked, and he changed the channel to the
Laura Ingraham Show
.

That was the beginning of my political education. Because of unplanned logistics, in 2008 and 2009 I found myself driving five hours a day. We had sold our Florida home, left our rental that had the luscious garden and view of the Hollywood sign, and bought my dream house on the outskirts of LA. It was a two-story house on a mountaintop, overlooking a breathtaking view. I had practically stolen it in a short sale. Dad said I was lucky that the economy crashed so I could finally afford my dream house. I was in heaven, even though the attic was full of rats, and a snake actually crawled through a crack somewhere and curled up next to my bare foot while I was on the internet.

Paul and I had horrible fights about this dream house. Paul doesn’t love LA as much as I do. I can be very stubborn, so for three years we were bicoastal: Paul continued to work in Miami and commute every ten days from FL to CA to see us. Aubrey’s school was now an hour one way, so I had lots of time to be educated in the car by Ingraham, Monica, Gallagher, Ziegler, Prager, Levin, Pastore, Rush, and Hannity. My brain and my hips grew about three inches. At 2 p.m., I was glued to
Fox News
watching Glenn Beck and his blackboard. The more I learned the more alarmed I became. Around this time, I heard a rumor that Obama had sent out a decree that citizens should report their friends and neighbors to the government online (at
[email protected]
) if they did not agree with Obamacare.
Thought police?!
I was livid. So I reported myself twice! My blood pressure rose. I developed a nervous twitch. I realized Communism was here.

I needed an outlet for my outraged patriotism. Andrew Breitbart provided this by publishing my blogs on
Big Hollywood
, where I chronicled my adventures as a beginning political activist. Andrew was a tornado of truth and I was in awe of him. He was always in a hurry. I once said to him, “You created the
Huffington Post
?!”

He replied, “And I only made $250,000!”

Once I asked him if I could tell the story of the night I spent in his house. He said loudly, “I don’t care what people say about me! All press is good press!”

Barreling down the 210 freeway in 2009, I was mentally going over my notes for my third political speech (how did that happen?). My cell phone rang. It was Breitbart! How did he have my number? I barely knew him. It’s illegal in California to talk on the phone while driving, so I kept checking my rear-view mirror. Andrew said something like, “It’s so great what you are doing! You are like the average housewife who has never been political, and is suddenly fighting for freedom! You will inspire so many people. You will go down in history, not only as one of the first who changed Los Angeles from a 100% liberal town to an at least 50/50 town, but who also saved America!” His words were more erudite than that, and he did go off on random tangents, but that was the gist of the call. He was encouraging me. This was a strange thing for Los Angeles. People compete, they don’t encourage.

I stammered my thanks, then asked, “Before you hang up, can I say Obama is a Communist? Is that technically correct? I mean, everyone says ‘Marxist’ but Karl Marx wrote
The Communist Manifesto
, so what’s the difference? Is McCarthyism scaring people away from the C-word? I just want to be correct, you know.”

Breitbart replied, “Well, the Marxist, uh, Communism is… well, it’s… Victoria, just say whatever you want to say.”