There Goes My Social Life (21 page)

“You're never gonna work in Hollywood again,” I was told.

“You're black,” my friends—and even family—told me. “Don't be a sellout.”

Of course, when people tell me to shut up, that's when I'm most likely to speak.

After doing a few guest stints on Fox, I was offered a regular gig on
Outnumbered
. The show, in case you haven't seen it, is a talk show with four female panelists and one male panelist. They rotate the hosts so that there's always different chemistry in the dialogue about the day's events. I maintain my home in California but I fly into New York to do the shows. Some days I'm on Fox all day—on all kinds of shows offering all kinds of opinions. You might assume correctly that I am full of them, on virtually every topic. I love the whole experience. I love getting hair and makeup, I love going into the cold studio a little early so I can gather my thoughts, focus my mind, and get acclimated to the temperature before recording.

Our studio is located in the heart of the city, so pedestrians sometimes peek into the windows and wave in the hopes of getting on camera. I love all of the activity surrounding the topics of the day. To prepare for the show, we get a list of topics that might be covered. (That way, when a topic is brought up—whether it be about Iran, the First Lady's efforts to make everyone plant a garden, or the Oscars—our thoughts are organized and informed.) But we only get them two hours in advance. That quick turnaround took me a while to get used to. In fact, I'm still getting acclimated to the challenge. But with every show, I feel more and more confident, and I am growing more fascinated with the whole world of journalism and politics.

I love the hour preceding the airing. The other hosts talk to their friends and advisors about the topics before we go on. . . . “What do you think?” they might ask. There are disagreements, interesting give and take, and changes of opinion.

And that's
before
the cameras start rolling.

In the studio, people hand out coffee, the hosts look through their notes. Then, suddenly, the lights darken and the set gets quiet.

“Thirty seconds to the tease.”

A couple of the hosts go live as they tell America what topics we'll be discussing that day. The excitement is palpable, I admit. Occasionally I get a little nervous. But I don't get as nervous as Nathan, who worries when I don't listen to his suggestions and just speak off the top of my head. If I catch his eye during the show after a rant, I can read his mind.

You just caused Twitter to explode again
.

But that's the fun of it, right?

On a Thursday in April, I got a text from Natey telling me that Meredith Vieira had invited me on her show to discuss various topics. I love Meredith—not only is she a classy lady, the last time I was on her show I got to meet the sexy actor Anthony Mackie, who was promoting his upcoming movie,
Black or White
. Plus, Meredith and I have great chemistry. Of course I'd go.

I probably should've thought better of it. I had just had major surgery, from which I hadn't quite recovered. Or at least that's what my doctor would later tell me, when he was scolding me for taking the red-eye from Los Angeles to New York. I slept on the flight. When I arrived bright and early the next morning, I was happy to be in New York again. There's something about that city—my heart beats faster as soon as I see that skyline from my seat. I feel like a totally different person when I'm there. It's invigorating.

It was less invigorating when my greeter didn't show up for forty-five minutes, which caused me to have to lug my suitcases about a mile as I searched for him and the car. I could hear the sound of my doctor's voice telling me to take it easy, but I didn't want to miss out on Meredith's show. I went to my hotel, jumped in the shower, and went to NBC where I hurriedly got hair and makeup. I had gotten a list of topics we might discuss, and one of them was women's equality when it comes to pay. I didn't have to prepare for this topic. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what I was going to say. Don't make excuses because of your sex, your color, or your anything. That's where I'm coming from. Everyone has their own struggles. Life is hard, don't use anything as an excuse that'll hold you back. Nothing. I'm a woman. I'm black. I take full responsibility for my life. I don't care about statistics. I'll overcome them.

As I expected, it was wonderful to see Meredith. We chatted amiably, and I even told her (on air) that I'd decided not to have sex outside of marriage. Then the conversation turned to the supposed “wage gap” between men and women.

“It's an excuse. Stop making excuses,” I said. “You know, if there are opportunities, seize them. And be prepared for them. And be the best, if that's what it takes. If you have to be extraordinary, then be extraordinary.”

Meredith then quoted the “fact” that everyone in the media has been quoting for years. Women make 78 cents on the dollar that men make. Meredith said that, at this rate, her twenty-two-year-old daughter would finally live in a world of equal pay when she was in her sixties.

“I don't know if that's true . . . ,” I said.

“That's true, that's documented.”

“ . . . I feel like your daughter will be able to make as much money as she wants in her life. Just like you are. I mean, look at you . . . ,” I said.

“. . . I am successful,” she said. “But it took a long time . . . . For many years I was not getting paid the same as the guys.”

“And you think it's because you're a woman?”

“I think that had a lot to do with it . . .”

“ . . . I guess I won't put my fate into anything other than my own action and taking my destiny in my, in my hands. I will not be victim to anything.”

“I'm not saying I'm a victim. I'm pissed off. I don't wanna be a victim.”

The crowd loved Meredith's outrage and began applauding. However, I wasn't buying it.

“If you want to be pissed off about it, then be pissed off about it and work harder for it. But I don't think us, you know, complaining about it, because there is a law passed that we get paid equal pay.”

Meredith ended the show segment by saying, “Except we don't. But, we don't. We don't! We don't! We don't.”

After the segment, we hugged. I love doing Meredith's show. She's never mean, and I enjoy the fun give-and-take about important issues. Meredith and I always agree to disagree. Everyone's entitled to their humble opinion, and I think she does a great job of keeping the conversation classy.

“So what did you guys talk about?” Nathan asked me when I called him on the way from the studio. I had to immediately catch a flight to Washington, D.C., which I'm sure my doctor would've hated . . . had he known.

“I told her I was no longer having sex outside of marriage,” I said.

Nathan waited a beat. He didn't want to talk to me about my sex life or lack thereof. “Anything else?”

“Nothing really,” I said.

That's why Nathan and I were both surprised when I started getting tweets about how “Meredith owned Stacey Dash on the wage gap issue!” I didn't feel like I'd gotten owned at all. Sure, I wish I had walked in there with more data about the truth behind the issue. But here's the thing. It's damn near impossible to find out the truth about any matter in American politics when the media tells lie after lie after lie. And even more than the media . . . the president of the United States regurgitated this myth during a State of the Union address.

“Today, women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns,” he said to America. “That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment.”

What's really an embarrassment is that President Obama must get his State of the Union talking points from MSNBC. This gender pay gap myth is the difference between the average earnings of all full-time men and women, without regard for differences in job choices, positions, schooling, tenure, or even how many hours they work per week. But that sure sounds like relevant data, right?

And so, like always, I went to Twitter to start speaking out.

         
The so-called wage gap is mostly, and perhaps entirely, an artifact of the different CHOICES men and women make . . .

Then I linked to an article in
U
.
S
.
News
&
World Report
that pointed out that women are not “being cheated out of 24 percent of their salary.” In fact, people get paid different amounts according to what they do with their lives—in what fields of study they choose to enroll, what types of professions they choose to pursue, what types of balances they choose to achieve between home and work life.

But I wasn't done on Twitter:

         
I am not ANTI-WOMAN! I just don't believe that my gender needs a bunch of men in Congress to “save us” from the big bad world.

That one was retweeted several times. Then, I wrote:

         
#DashClass: Census data from 2008 show that single, childless women in their 20s now earn 8% more on average than their male counterparts.

And later:

         
The 77 cents vs a dollar is based on B.S. statistics. STOP USING IT. CELEBRATE that EDUCATED women in their 20s make more than men!

And

         
I DON'T CARE IF I AM THE LONE VOICE IN THE WOODS, I WILL NOT LET THE GOVERNMENT MAKE WOMEN AN ENTITLEMENT CLASS. #HOLDINGTHELINE

Okay, so maybe I was getting carried away with the all-caps, but this is a serious lie that the media has been spoon-feeding us for decades. Please. Then, to end things on a positive note—is that even a thing on Twitter?!—I tweeted:

         
.
@meredithvieira
is my friend. I LOVE having discussions w/her on
@MeredithShow
. When we disagree it does not mean we are tense #GrownUps

I tweeted until the wee hours of the morning, going back and forth with naysayers, occasionally retweeting insults, and having just a generally good time. What an honor to be able to exercise my free speech rights while sitting in my bed, with my laptop, in my pajamas. I fell asleep, exhausted at all of the activity and the lingering effects of my surgery. The next day, I was shocked to wake up and discover that I had trended globally on Twitter.

I smiled.

It's amazing how big a punch you can deliver in 140 characters or less.

THIRTEEN

LOVE

Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them—every day begin the task anew.

—St. Francis de Sales

G
ina came through the door with the mail in her hand.

“You got a letter from the Bronx bureau president,” she said, her eyes wide.

I tore open the letter and had to choke back the tears. “I've been invited to be inducted into the Bronx Walk of Fame.”

“What does that mean?” Gina asked, grabbing the letter. She read aloud. “Members of the 2015 Walk of Fame class will be inducted during the 44th annual Bronx Week.” She looked at me and explained. “Your name will be put on a street sign along Grand Concourse!”

“Get all the details, and reply now. Tell them I'll do whatever they want me to do,” I said. “Oh and make sure you tell them that I'm deeply honored.” I felt like God was giving me a second chance, sort of like how God is giving the Bronx a second chance. Did you know they've built the biggest mall in New York City in the Bronx? Yep. Crime has fallen, and real estate agents now have coined the term “SoBro” to make it a cool destination for New Yorkers. For years, my home neighborhood has been the nation's poorest congressional district. But now that Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods have been built up—hipsterized!—people are looking at the South Bronx with fresh eyes.

I'm going to take my kids to my old neighborhood for the ceremony.

“Do you think my old building is still there?” I asked Gina.

“Why wonder?” she said, pulling up Google Maps. When I saw the street view of my old neighborhood, I started to shake and sob. There it was. My building, but there were no kids on the block like there used to be. Around it, I could see that some buildings had collapsed and others were boarded up. I felt like I'd gone back to a haunted house, even though I was just looking at it on the screen of my laptop from the comfort of California.

I can't imagine what I'm going to feel like when I'm actually there. I'm so thankful. I know what it is to be broke. I know what it is to have to strive and survive. I'm blessed enough that God granted me a job that I love to give me a second chance at life.

And speaking of love, about a year ago I was asked on
Outnumbered
a question that pertained to that topic. Some topics don't require any preparation, the kind I can talk about freestyle.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?” I was asked.

“Of course! It's the best kind.”

I walked off the set, happy that I'd managed to pull off another great segment. Natey, however, was standing there with his hands on his head.

“Your take on love is the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life,” he said.

I laughed. Sometimes Natey is my manager, sometimes he's a friend, sometimes he's my enemy. I couldn't tell which was coming at me, so he took me to lunch to discuss my romantic deficiencies.

“Everything you just said about love makes no sense to me,” Nathan said. “Not practically, not even biblically.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“When you see a guy for the first time, do you see little blue birds flying around you like Cinderella?”

“Yes, and I see butterflies,” I added.

“And you have your own soundtrack?”

Over the course of the lunch, he gave me a lecture on romance, but we also discussed how my views on romance were shaped—by my background. I grew up in circumstances where many girls got abused and most girls got pregnant too young with no husband and no money. Seventy-two percent of African American babies are being born to unmarried mothers.
¹
Black families are split, and entire generations of black children are being raised without fathers.

“I guess you're right, Natey,” I said, when I could finally get a word in edgewise. “I think my view of love is—” I struggled for the right word. “Warped.”

“Well, it's what a teenage girl would say about love.”

“It's fantasy,” I said. “And I'll never stop believing in happily ever after anyway.”

Sometimes on
Outnumbered
, they recycle the topics, depending on what's going on in the news. Last April I went to New York to do the show, went into the bowels of the Fox News building, and sat in the hair and makeup chair as I thought about the upcoming show. Right there, in my e-mail, I saw it in the list of topics.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?”

I smiled. When Nathan showed up a few minutes later, he eyed me suspiciously.

“What are you going to say this time?” he asked. “For real. You have a chance at a do-over.”

“Which question?” I pretended I had no idea what he was talking about.

“The one about love at first sight.”

“That I believe in it . . . . After all, my three marriages are proof!”

“Exactly,” he laughed.

I was once again reminded of what a crazy world this is. After all of these years of bad romantic decisions, of giving myself to men who turned around and hurt me, I've decided to be celibate until marriage. I'm not going to continue doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

I'm going to do things the way God intended.

Better late than never.

Oh and I guess I don't need to tell you that Nathan fulfilled the third item on the list, because you're holding it.

But here's the thing about love. While I might not quite get it when it comes to romantic love, I do understand love in a deep and profound way. I learned it when I held Austin in my arms in the hospital. When I saw Lola for the first time.

Her first word, by the way, was “Au-tin,” and he's adored her ever since. Getting a new baby sister when he was thirteen was the best form of birth control I could have ever come up with for him. For a solid year, all Austin heard was “Go change her diaper. Go feed her. Go get her.” He always did, mostly without complaining.

I know God gave me children for a reason. They are my everything. Lola is scary beautiful, kind, and loving. I tell her every single day—every single day—that I love her, that she can always tell me the truth, and that I'll always be there for her.

Recently, her father, Austin, and I went to a water park for her birthday with five of her friends. Austin came up and said, “These boys are shooting at them with water guns and trying to talk to them. It's freaking me out, Mom.”

“Go take care of it,” I laughed. “Go take care of it.”

I may not have had success in my marriages, but I've definitely been blessed. As I watched Austin—my knight in shining armor—walk across the pool area to scare off the boys, I witnessed it. I understood it. I was almost overcome with it.

Love.

And that's just an echo of the love God has shown to me.

When I gave myself fully to God, things began happening that I never would have ever expected. Miraculous things. Who would've known a tweet that got such a negative response would turn out to be so positive for me? It made me realize that I had a voice, that I have something to say, and that what I say actually has value.

A Bible passage from Deuteronomy comes to mind:

“If you listen to these commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, and if you carefully obey them, the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always be on top and never at the bottom.”

Most people where I come from don't know this verse. They don't dream. They don't think they have the right to even imagine a better way of life. They've been told it's impossible, which breaks my heart. If my message of faith, capitalism, and opportunity can reach just one person, then I feel like all the hate has been worth it.

And speaking of miraculous things, I recently got an invitation to the White House Correspondents' Dinner. When I told Natey, he flipped with excitement.

“That's amazing,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked. I had never even heard of the event.

“Nerd Prom,” Natey said, but the president and first lady and all kinds of senior government officials would be there, to be—supposedly—skewered by the media. “It's a multimillion-dollar week-long power trip, basically, and is one of the most coveted tickets in America.”

“Should I go?”

“Of course!” he said, exasperated . . . as if I should have grasped the gravity of the invitation. But this is not my world. These are not my people. My career has been in Hollywood, not D.C. “It means you've made it,” he added.

When he said those words, images of my life flashed before my face. Crying at the door when my parents left me with the family, stickball on the streets of the South Bronx, fights with kids who said I was stuck up, the rush of cold air as I jumped from my bedroom window, the adrenaline I felt as Richard Pryor and I watched our horse cross the finish line, the dread in the pit of my stomach when I couldn't afford to pay my electricity bills, the threats I received when people told me my thoughts as a black woman weren't welcomed . . . the fears that I'd be ostracized . . . that I'd never be successful if I espoused conservative views.

There goes my social life?

Not quite.

“Don't you see how amazing this is?” Natey said to me. “This whole adventure started with a tweet about voting for Romney, and now you get to go to dinner with the president.”

As I got ready for the White House Correspondents' Dinner, I thought about how far this girl from the Bronx had come. I selected a long Dahlia dress that was emerald green with lace, rhinestones, and beads. (It had a train, so that when Brian Kilmeade saw it later he called me a mermaid.) Yes, I brought out the five-inch heels for this, and Natey couldn't say a thing to me since he wasn't invited. I looked in the mirror, ran my hands over the beads and smiled. But then I heard it. My mother's voice.

You
'
re not good enough
.
You
'
re a tramp
.
Selfish
.
Stupid
.

I shook my head, but the thoughts stubbornly lingered. I should've been so excited about the moment, but the thoughts in my head from my mother effectively popped the bubble.

I got in the shower and tried to wash her out of my head.

God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners
,
Christ died for us
.

If that sacrifice was made for me, then I'm not worthless. In fact, my life has infinite worth. Because it was given to me, it can't be taken away. Especially not by my mom.

I toweled off, trying to think about my worth and my value. By the time I walked out the door, I felt proud of being in this position and worthy of the invitation.

The dinner was held at the ballroom of the Washington Hilton Hotel, the infamous location of the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. When I arrived, completely made up and ready for this “event of the year,” I was stopped at the door.

“Ticket?” one of the event staffers asked me.

“I don't have a ticket.” Apparently, the people at Fox were supposed to hand me a paper ticket, a fact I learned too late.

“You can't get in without a ticket,” he said. “Go to the concierge and see if they have yours.” The concierge didn't have it either, so I paced back and forth in the lobby, texting Natey and trying—desperately—to figure out how to get into that room.

As I fretted, people would stop me and say, “Are you Stacey Dash? Can I get a photo?” I'd pause, strike a pose, and smile. This, in a way, encapsulated how I've often felt about my life in general: that it looked good, but was a façade. That someday someone was going to look at me and say, “You're a fraud. We see you for what you are now.”

As I paced back and forth in that lobby, I wondered . . . would that be today? Maybe my mom had been right about me the whole time.

Thankfully, mercifully, the other Fox News guests arrived. They embraced me, put their arms around me, and brought me right into the grand ballroom.

I felt a little like the people described in a biblical parable about a man who gave a great feast. He told his servant, “Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame. . . . Go out to the roads and country lanes and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full.”

No, I wasn't poor, crippled, blind, or lame. But I could just as easily imagine the Bible saying, “go out quickly into the streets and bring in the drug addicts, the abandoned children, the rape victims, and the unwanted.” That's how God does things. That's what He has done for me.

That night, I sat with the Fox personalities on the right hand side of the room, and the president of the United States sat next to the podium at the front of the ballroom. There, a comedienne stood and threw jokes at the president, at the most powerful man in the world. And he laughed. In many countries, people who criticize their leaders end up dead, especially women. As much as I disrespect Obama's policies, I had to smile . . . at a world leader who subjects himself to such a spectacle. But also at a country that makes it possible for a black kid from the South Bronx to end up in the same room with a black kid who ended up being president. Also, I smiled at how people in our democracy get along in spite of profound political disagreements, at how Americans at their best esteem free speech above all else . . . above politeness and political correctness.