Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(12)
Her experience is reminiscent of the times the late Diana, Princess of Wales, privately took her boys, William and Harry, to visit the homeless and the sick in central London so that they would hopefully appreciate that life did not begin and end at the palace gates.
Meghan’s letter-writing campaigns, interest in current affairs, purposeful traveling, and gender awareness were all of a piece with a young girl embarking on a journey where feminism could coexist with femininity, as well as an ethos of hard work matched by a willingness to try the new and the interesting.
By sublime irony, just as her letter-writing campaign got underway, another letter-writing campaign was kicking off, this one regarding the raunchy comedy show Married… with Children, for which her father was now the lighting director. Meghan often sat on the floor of the studio after school waiting for her father to finish work so he could take her home. Indeed, she thrilled her fellow classmates when she was given permission to bring several friends on set to meet the cast.
As she sat quietly reading or studying, all kinds of ribald scenes were played out, some involving various stages of undress and semi-nudity, as well as off-color jokes about sex—hardly the normal afterschool fare for a young girl. In January 1989, a Mormon from Michigan, Terry Rakolta, led a boycott of the show after the screening of an episode entitled “Her Cups Runneth Over,” which involved the purchase of a bra. That episode showed the character of Al Bundy ogling a naked model in a department store.
The resulting media storm led to some sponsors withdrawing advertising and the conservative Parents Television Council describing the show as “the crudest comedy on prime time television… peppered with lewd punch lines about sex, masturbation, the gay lifestyle and the lead character’s fondness for pornographic magazines and strip clubs.”
Meghan later described her own misgivings about spending time around the long-running comedy when she appeared on Craig Ferguson’s late night show. She told the host: “It’s a very perverse place for a girl to grow up. I went to Catholic school. I’m there in my school uniform and the guests would be [former porn star] Traci Lords.” While she wasn’t allowed to watch the show when it aired, her mother would let her kiss the screen as her dad’s name went by in the credits at the end of the program.
Perverse it may have been, but it paid the bills—and Meghan’s private school fees. At this time, unbeknownst to her, her father enjoyed a slice of luck that meant he no longer had to work such a brutal schedule. In 1990 he won the California State Lottery, scooping $750,000 with five numbers, which included Meghan’s birthdate. The win was ample payback for the thousands he had spent over the years buying lottery tickets.
As he still had outstanding financial matters concerning his divorce from Doria, he kept the win secret. In order to avoid registering his name with the lottery authorities, he sent an old Chicago friend to pick up his winnings. The plan, according to his son, backfired when his pal ended up swindling him out of the lion’s share of his fortune in a failed jewelry business.
Before he lost his loot, Tom gave his son a substantial handout to start a flower shop and bought daughter Yvonne a second car after she wrecked the first one he had given her.
Within three years of his big win Tom had declared bankruptcy, the lottery win proving more of a curse than a blessing. At least he had kept some money aside to pay for the next stage of Meghan’s education. His daughter enrolled as a freshman at Immaculate Heart, a private all-girls Catholic school just yards from his home in Los Feliz. From then on it made sense for her to live with her father during the week. It was a decision that would have far-reaching implications for the way she was seen by her new teachers and classmates.
3
A Street Called Gladys
Sixth Street in Downtown Los Angeles is not a place for the unwary, and after dark even the wary give it a wide berth. Danger lurks in the shadows; desperation loiters on the sidewalk. This is the heart of Skid Row, the mushrooming and endlessly shifting encampment of the homeless and the helpless that is a makeshift home to more than two thousand people. Los Angeles is the homeless capital of America. At the last count there were more than 57,000 men, women, and children sleeping rough in the City of Angels. Tent towns frequently spring up around the city underpasses, in empty buildings, and in other open spaces.
This particular stretch is more organized than most of the impromptu enclaves of Skid Row, with volunteers handing out water, clean socks, and food. And there is one place in particular, at the corner of Sixth and Gladys, that offers a welcome oasis of calm and tranquility amid the shouts, moans, and shrieks of those who live in the tents and cardboard sheds that line both sides of the road.
This is the Hospitality Kitchen, more popularly known as the Hippie Kitchen, which is part of the Catholic Worker community founded more than eighty years ago by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Their stated goal is to “feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner.” In an average day volunteers will hand out a nourishing but simple meal to around one thousand folk who line up around the block; for many it is their only food for the day. There is no prayer or proselytizing, just beans, salad, a hunk of bread, and a thick slice of goodwill.
Their uncompromising ideals have, at times, placed them in head-on conflict with the Catholic hierarchy, local police, and even other homeless charities. Catholic Worker activists are known to protest unfair treatment of the homeless, American militarism and nuclear policy, as well as the death penalty. Acts of civil disobedience have led some to suffer arrest and even jail. Former nun Catherine Morris, now eighty-three, and a stalwart of the Hippie Kitchen for more than forty years, has lost count of the number of times she and her husband, Jeff Dietrich, have been arrested for peaceful acts of civil disobedience. They like to think of themselves as the “Merry Pranksters,” the name derived from the early hippie followers of counterculture author and poet Ken Kesey.