Read Online You Have No Idea: A Famous Daughter, Her No-Nonsense Mother, and How They Survived Pageants, Hollywood, Love, Loss by Vanessa Williams, Helen Williams - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Vanessa Williams, Helen Williams
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GIFTS! Remember, you will always be a Miss America and I will always be proud of you. Be brave and strong, my girl, as I know you can and must be.
Love, Your friend and sister,
Lee Meriwether
The local kids, some of whom I used to babysit, organized a Victory for Vanessa rally that paraded by my house. A bunch of the kids rang the doorbell and presented my mom with bouquets of flowers.
It was the only time I think she cried during the whole ordeal. I didn’t witness it because I was hiding down the street, but it was captured in a photo that ran in all the local papers.
The scandal made the cover of newspapers and all the majortabloids for two straight weeks. Even the Daily Mirror in Sydney, Australia, reported on the scandal with a cover story: banned beauty. Most Europeans didn’t get why this was such a big deal. She was just naked— Americans are so uptight!
For me, it seemed like an eternity in which I was the punch line to every late-night monologue. Joan Rivers, whom I adored and met on The Tonight Show during my reign, was particularly relentless. Just when I figured she’d exhausted every possible Vanessa Williams joke, she’d have a whole new slew of them. I had to learn not to take the attacks personally. “She’s a tramp,” she said over and over. (Ironically, “The Lady Is a Tramp” was one of the songs I sang on appearances as Miss America.)
Comedian Chris Rock attacked me on his HBO series The Chris Rock Show . Years later, I ran into him at the airport. He hemmed and hawed. I looked him right in the eye. “I heard what you said about me on your special.”
He kind of stammered, “Yeah, well…” And that was the end of it. There was sort of this unspoken understanding. He was doing his job commenting on current events—and I was, unfortunately, the current event.
There were Vanessa jokes that went viral before there was such a thing as going viral: “Jesse Jackson is asking Vanessa Williams to run on his ticket. He knows she is the only one who can lick Bush.”
UGH!
Larry Barton, the mayor of Talladega, Alabama, sent a letter demanding I return the key to the city he had presented to me when I served as grand marshal in their annual Christmas parade and sang the national anthem at the Talladega 500, the big NASCAR race. “… Miss Williams, you have permitted yourself to be exploited and disappointed thousands of Americans by your actions, but more important, you have disappointed God.… Please don’t continue to waste your life. Ask God to forgive you, and ask him for guidance.…”
Of course my mother was furious. “You’re not returning that key,” she said. Then she sent him a letter: “… I can say with great certainty that Vanessa was an exemplary Miss America, and I could not, in view of that, justify returning your ‘Key to the City.’”
In 1995, Mayor Barton was convicted and sent to prison on federal charges of defrauding the city of Talladega. (I guess it is okay to steal, but not undress!)
There were the calls to my childhood home and, of course, the barrage of hate mail. I was called the standard “Whore,” “Pig,” “Slut,” but then there were some real doozies:
“You are worse than Hitler.”
“In one fatal swoop, you pushed black people back to the time of slavery.”
“You are part of Satan’s chamber of horrors.”
“You are a clone of every wicked thought and deed perpetuated upon mankind by Beelzebub.”
Through it all, though, Ramon and I were getting closer. Bruce was in Syracuse and we were drifting apart. Ramon was commuting from Los Angeles to be with me. We spent time dating in New York, and traveled to the Bahamas and Fiji. He was my publicist and adviser, helping Dennis with business decisions as well. Ramon had spent years handling actors, musicians, and athletes, such as James Caan (whom I later worked with in the movie Eraser ), Bette Midler, and baseball great Lou Brock. Ramon was established in the business and he knew so
Love, Your friend and sister,
Lee Meriwether
The local kids, some of whom I used to babysit, organized a Victory for Vanessa rally that paraded by my house. A bunch of the kids rang the doorbell and presented my mom with bouquets of flowers.
It was the only time I think she cried during the whole ordeal. I didn’t witness it because I was hiding down the street, but it was captured in a photo that ran in all the local papers.
The scandal made the cover of newspapers and all the majortabloids for two straight weeks. Even the Daily Mirror in Sydney, Australia, reported on the scandal with a cover story: banned beauty. Most Europeans didn’t get why this was such a big deal. She was just naked— Americans are so uptight!
For me, it seemed like an eternity in which I was the punch line to every late-night monologue. Joan Rivers, whom I adored and met on The Tonight Show during my reign, was particularly relentless. Just when I figured she’d exhausted every possible Vanessa Williams joke, she’d have a whole new slew of them. I had to learn not to take the attacks personally. “She’s a tramp,” she said over and over. (Ironically, “The Lady Is a Tramp” was one of the songs I sang on appearances as Miss America.)
Comedian Chris Rock attacked me on his HBO series The Chris Rock Show . Years later, I ran into him at the airport. He hemmed and hawed. I looked him right in the eye. “I heard what you said about me on your special.”
He kind of stammered, “Yeah, well…” And that was the end of it. There was sort of this unspoken understanding. He was doing his job commenting on current events—and I was, unfortunately, the current event.
There were Vanessa jokes that went viral before there was such a thing as going viral: “Jesse Jackson is asking Vanessa Williams to run on his ticket. He knows she is the only one who can lick Bush.”
UGH!
Larry Barton, the mayor of Talladega, Alabama, sent a letter demanding I return the key to the city he had presented to me when I served as grand marshal in their annual Christmas parade and sang the national anthem at the Talladega 500, the big NASCAR race. “… Miss Williams, you have permitted yourself to be exploited and disappointed thousands of Americans by your actions, but more important, you have disappointed God.… Please don’t continue to waste your life. Ask God to forgive you, and ask him for guidance.…”
Of course my mother was furious. “You’re not returning that key,” she said. Then she sent him a letter: “… I can say with great certainty that Vanessa was an exemplary Miss America, and I could not, in view of that, justify returning your ‘Key to the City.’”
In 1995, Mayor Barton was convicted and sent to prison on federal charges of defrauding the city of Talladega. (I guess it is okay to steal, but not undress!)
There were the calls to my childhood home and, of course, the barrage of hate mail. I was called the standard “Whore,” “Pig,” “Slut,” but then there were some real doozies:
“You are worse than Hitler.”
“In one fatal swoop, you pushed black people back to the time of slavery.”
“You are part of Satan’s chamber of horrors.”
“You are a clone of every wicked thought and deed perpetuated upon mankind by Beelzebub.”
Through it all, though, Ramon and I were getting closer. Bruce was in Syracuse and we were drifting apart. Ramon was commuting from Los Angeles to be with me. We spent time dating in New York, and traveled to the Bahamas and Fiji. He was my publicist and adviser, helping Dennis with business decisions as well. Ramon had spent years handling actors, musicians, and athletes, such as James Caan (whom I later worked with in the movie Eraser ), Bette Midler, and baseball great Lou Brock. Ramon was established in the business and he knew so
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