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Tea Party Princess

Victoria Jackson went from the big leagues of comedy to the rabid right of modern politics

Victoria Jackson hurtles through intersections and down side streets while using her left hand to hold a Flip cam to her face. The inside of her car—a weathered Honda Civic with "Nobama," Marco Rubio, and Tea Party bumper stickers—smells like it has been fumigated with sweet incense. Steering with elbows and the occasional pinkie, she opens a Bible inscribed with her name and quotes Scripture in her inimitable high-pitched voice. Then she turns the camera on a reporter riding shotgun. She suspects he's a socialist. "Don't you think that some people are on welfare from cradle to grave," she demands, "because the government is encouraging them never to work?"

Jackson’s handstand, which she learned at age four, earned her attention on SNL.
Giulio Sciorio
Jackson’s handstand, which she learned at age four, earned her attention on SNL.
Jackson rode the Tea Party Express bus with Herman Cain.
Courtesy of Victoria Jackson
Jackson rode the Tea Party Express bus with Herman Cain.

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"Leaving on a Jet Plane," her ringtone, blares from some unknown recess of her purse, and she's suddenly burrowing through loads of makeup cases to find it. "What if we crashed and died on video?" she says, laughing wildly. "That would be the most viral video of the world! You'd be dead, but you'd have a really viral video!"

At age 52, Victoria Jackson bears little resemblance to that lithe and sweetly dopey girl with the grating voice on Saturday Night Live. And you wouldn't recognize her from those eight mostly forgettable '80s and '90s feature films, such as I Love You to Death and No More Baths. She's more plump. Or as Howard Stern recently put it, she "looks like she ate Victoria Jackson." 

Her comedy career, which took her from Johnny Carson's stage in Los Angeles to 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, long ago squeaked its last breath. These days, she's a Miami-area suburban grandmother and wife of a buff local cop with a Bad Boys–esque career full of shoot-outs and commendations. And to some Christian conservatives, she is a seer of truth. The Washington Post once described her thusly: "If you opened her head, it would be filled with cotton candy." Now the former daffy actress is a bizarrely riveting semi-regular political pundit on Fox News.

She's no Keyboard Cat. But videos uploaded of her—on cable news programs, on her online talk show, or filmed by her own erratic hand—have in just the past few months amassed more than a million page views. She has strummed a ukulele while harmonizing that Muslims "like beheadings and pedophile weddings." Even Bill O'Reilly laughed at her when she compared Barack Obama to "Castro in Cuba, or the guy in China, or Saddam Hussein." She has declared, in protest of a gay kiss on Glee, that homosexual children need to "pray the gay away" and that there's a "spiritual war in America."

But calling her the lunatic fringe is at most half-right. She has been invited to the office of Republican Florida congressman Bill Posey, who commiserated when she said Obama has "the fakest birth certificate I've ever seen in my life." She has gained a sympathetic audience with nearly every GOP candidate of the 2012 presidential campaign (excluding the guy she calls a "fake conservative," Mitt Romney). She rode the Tea Party Express bus with Herman Cain and joined Michele Bachmann at a D.C. rally where the crowd chanted, "There's a communist living in the White House!" If not the captain of the S.S. Tea Party, she's at least the screeching mermaid strapped to its bow.

Victoria's 76-year-old mom, Marlene, giggly and moon-faced, pulls out a throne-like seat when her daughter arrives at the family's Miami Shores home with a male visitor. "That's the master's chair," she says cheerily, gesturing for the visitor to sit before delivering cookies and Coca-Cola in old-timey glass bottles. "The man is the master."

Then Jim Jackson appears. He is a strapping, boyish 83-year-old former gymnast in thick spectacles. A squiggly triangle of pale flesh, left over from a melanoma graft, mars his left cheek. Victoria stands by, barefoot with cherry-red toenail polish and, as always, filming with her Flip cam. The little family gathers around a high-top table.

Soon, Jim begins with booming recollections of his youth as a champion gymnast. "I'm homophobic," he announces while describing why he doesn't like to strip in male locker rooms. "I also don't like fat people. Every time I see a 300-to-400-pound lady or a man sit down to stuff her face, I want to say: 'No, you fool! You're killing yourself!'"

Then he adds for good measure: "Our son is 300 pounds."

Marlene and Jim met around 1950 in Chicago, where he was raised and she was studying to be a nurse. Victoria's mom was from a family of Baptist zealots near Windom, Minnesota, a plains town about three hours southwest of the Twin Cities. During the Great Depression, the whole family went door-to-door preaching the evils of alcohol, caffeine, movies, music, dancing, dice, and cards.

Marlene's much-adored sister, Angeline Rose, developed schizophrenia as a teenager and died in a state hospital. Marlene blamed God, and in revenge, she married the happy-go-lucky, gymnastics-obsessed Jim, whose only religion was Fred Astaire and Burt Lancaster movies. They moved to Miami in the early '50s, partly because Jim was inspired by Clark Gable's Mutiny on the Bounty.

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  • Silkroad 02/16/2012 6:57:00 AM

    Wow. Nice anti-Semitism there.

  • 01/31/2012 3:43:00 PM

    she been t-bagged one too many times

  • max 01/31/2012 1:16:00 AM

    Right wing media is the retirement plan for un-funny SNL alums like her and dennis what'shisname. It must be an act no one is this dumb

  • Boyhell Flower 01/30/2012 6:32:00 PM

    She is the total american. She reminds me of the true underpinnings of the droves of shabby prep J-Crew, 'There will be blood' retro fashion conformists. the new openly 'white' self obsessed, zombie 'hipsters' in Williamsburg and their parents. The ultimate segregationist tribes person. New York City, L.A., popular culture, and this magazine in a nutshell.

  • 01/30/2012 4:16:00 PM

    A woman of questionable talent who was quasi-famous about twenty years ago speaking out on matters that are fringe and irrelevant, in my opinion. And yet, and yet, I read every single word of this article. That's some nice story-telling Gus Garcia-Roberts.

  • Bpfoley333 01/29/2012 7:36:00 PM

    Just to get my biases out front, I tend to find myself on the more conservative side of the political spectrum (conservative meaning a conservative roll for government, not "conservative" small government unless we're regulating your private life ) and for the life of me I don't quite get the point of the article. None of my friends who are on the right have given Victoria Jackson a second thought in years, nor do have they, or I for that matter, ever taken her seriously. It just seems like picking the low-hanging fruit.

  • 01/29/2012 1:11:00 AM

    Good luck on that!

  • Glennrferro 01/28/2012 1:59:00 PM

    That is an incredibly over-the-top diagnosis of someone because they disgree with you. I continue to notice that when liberals realize that they have nothing substantial to say, they resort to name calling, and attacks on the person, instead of challenges to the ideas. There are so many statements in your post that express staples of liberal ideation, that I'm almost surprised to see them there. Denial, projection, envy? May I make a diagnosis on the basis of some written words, as you did? I'm pretty sure you'd say yours is valid, while there's no chance mine could be, right?

  • 01/28/2012 12:44:00 PM

    No wonder the 'Pubs are in trouble.

  • Kaelle 01/28/2012 5:14:00 AM

    Check IMDB. She is credited, unfortunately.

  • 01/28/2012 12:47:00 AM

    Bro, your summations do not coincide with the sacrifices made. Go back and study the history man. Read about the lives of EVERY MAN who put his signature on The Declaration of Independence in 1776. They were all raked over the coals, losing lives as well as every possession! Despite these hardships, there was a nobility and dignity that was applied to Constitutional Law that has never been seen before or since. And what's replacing the Constitution in our generation is going to one day make you sick with disdain (you mark my words on this). To know your future you must first know your history: the two go hand in hand. You know, "what goes around comes around!" In addition, the early Americans didn't have modern climate control, dentistry, or medicine. Washington had to eat with wooden teeth (probably took him months to develop a sufficient callous on his gums before the sharp pains went away. Then the wood wore out; then he had to get new ones). And by the way, when George Washington led our armies to victory he would've been welcomed by every American to become king. He could have started a monarchy! (If he was power hungry like so many today). Instead, he said, "I just want to go home." King George of England said of George Washington: "He's a great man." Why? because King George would never step down from his throne. And neither would the halfwits running our government today if given half a chance; but our Founders established a system preventing the tyranny we see rising today. And that tyranny can only come by the removal of our liberty.

  • 01/27/2012 11:59:00 PM

    I feel sorry for her kids, she will abuse them just like her father abused her. what a bunch of sick fucks.

  • 01/27/2012 11:42:00 PM

    I think the whole thing must be a joke. Her dad doesn't like fat people? is he blind? his own daughter is a porker.

  • Siskokid888 01/27/2012 6:50:00 PM

    Yawn. Your "precious" and "revered" documents were written by wealthy white slaveowners to help themselves and no one else. Using them as some kind of moral standard to justify white conservative bigotry and capitalist exploitation is passé, bro. It's the 21st century, there is a new world coming where the many will benefit, not the few. And what this has to do with the crazy rantings of a washed up never was comidienne is beyond me.

  • yrwehere 01/27/2012 5:35:00 PM

    Come on, people, this story is hilarious! As someone else wrote, she is out-Colberting Stephen Colbert! There is no way that she can be serious. She might turn out to be one of the greatest conceptual comics of all time.

  • anonymouse 01/27/2012 4:49:00 PM

    Victoria Jackson is just one more example of an individual with deep psychological challenges and a dysfunctional family case history (plus more than her share of stupidity) who has entered the political ring, whether as politician or pundit. These disturbed people continually attempt to influence legislation or public opinion based on their own mental health issues (see closeted gay republican officials, etc.). The 24-hour media, desperate for content, gives them a a public voice they would have been denied in the past (okay, okay, marginal people such as Christian televangelists would sometimes make it through the barriers of sanity imposed by media gatekeepers), but that all came crashing down with the takeover of the news divisions by the entertainment division and the arrival of the internet. What can we do about them, other than ignore them?

  • Siskokid888 01/27/2012 4:31:00 PM

    Yawn. Your "precious" and "revered" documents were written by wealthy white slaveowners to help themselves and no one else. Using them as some kind of moral standard to justify white conservative bigotry and capitalist exploitation is passé, bro. It's the 21st century, there is a new world coming where the many will benefit, not the few. And what this has to do with the crazy rantings of a washed up never was comidienne is beyond me.

  • Siskokid888 01/27/2012 4:29:00 PM

    Yawn. Your "precious" and "revered" documents were written by wealthy white slaveowners to help themselves and no one else. Using them as some kind of moral standard to justify white conservative bigotry and capitalist exploitation is passé, bro. It's the 21st century, there is a new world coming where the many will benefit, not the few. And what this has to do with the crazy rantings of a washed up never was comidienne is beyond me.

  • Siskokid888 01/27/2012 4:27:00 PM

    Yawn. Your "precious" and "revered" documents were written by wealthy white slaveowners to help themselves and no one else. Using them as some kind of moral standard to justify white conservative bigotry and capitalist exploitation is passé, bro. It's the 21st century, there is a new world coming where the many will benefit, not the few. And what this has to do with the crazy rantings of a washed up never was comidienne is beyond me.

  • Siskokid888 01/27/2012 4:26:00 PM

    Yawn. Your "precious" and "revered" documents were written by wealthy white slaveowners to help themselves and no one else. Using them as some kind of moral standard to justify white conservative bigotry and capitalist exploitation is passé, bro. It's the 21st century, there is a new world coming where the many will benefit, not the few. And what this has to do with the crazy rantings of a washed up never was comidienne is beyond me.

  • Guest 01/27/2012 2:41:00 PM

    She had the small role of Lacey.

  • Yayagal250 01/27/2012 9:25:00 AM

    Excuse me, but this ninny was NOT in "I Love You to Death". I've seen that movie many times, and I'd remember, believe me.

  • bloodgimp 01/27/2012 3:54:00 AM

    Yeah, I have to agree here. I don't see anything remotely interesting about this boring story or this braindead irrelevant woman. Why VV chose to run this as a feature is beyond me.

  • 01/27/2012 2:05:00 AM

    You missed the point to my thesis. As a matter of fact, your words only work to circumvent the theme I present. That's the result of an irrational mind (or as you like to call it, "insane"). There's a huge difference between insanity and being deceived by another. Very few can say that what they believe was discovered on their own. We all attach our allegiance to certain people and ideas. Victoria has made her choice, and she essentially repeats what she's been assured by others is truth. And while I agree there's a whole lot of rubbish being declared as truth in religion, politics, and science, etc. there is a fundamentally immoral "insane" character in the business and government leadership of this country and world. This is evidenced by certain facts: Tens of thousands starve to death, die by disease, lose their jobs and homes, get beaten, tortured, murdered, raped, sodomized, ripped off, and betrayed every single day (needlessly). And the reforms needed to turn it around are not even publicly addressed (but with rare exception). Only the symptoms are dealt with via political pharmaceuticals (and we know how well Prozac works). This is why the severity of our hardship keeps increasing in both rate and scope, and the outlook is dim for America's future as long as this fundamentally abusive protocol is upheld. The human race has had a long time to remove the heartache and toil caused by greed, prejudice and imposed inequality. And we are as far from Utopia today as were our ancestors. But, there was one time in world history when a true attempt to remove all inequality and injustice was recorded and established into law: The Declaration of Independence; The Bill of Rights; and the Constitution of the United States of America. But this supreme gesture to secure "a more perfect union" is being done away today by our nation's very leaders, who, (in traitorous hypocrisy), swore an oath to uphold it. And all we can do is to hold back this erosion to despotism as long as we can with voice and vote. And if you care for this land its time you get involved too and show those you disagree with how it should be done!

  • SillyGlueSniffingRepublicant 01/27/2012 1:45:00 AM

    Her Brain was Destroyed by WIFI Shes such a fuckkin maniac!

  • Siskokid888 01/27/2012 12:37:00 AM

    ^and when the first real fact actually spills out of her insane mouth, we will indeed respect it. But not till then.

  • Siskokid888 01/27/2012 12:33:00 AM

    Six pages to profile this certifiably crazy ditz zero? There are plenty of sane hardworking progressive activists the Voice could be covering. Come on, folks.

  • 01/26/2012 11:27:00 PM

    Thank you for your comment on this site deep in enemy territory. I wish she said something about Lorne Michael's agenda above and beyond comedy like when he had boss Zucker in backstage to experience the taking down of Sarah Palin, his donations to Dodd, his Obama stroking head writer and fellow tribe member. Chevy Chase has said the liberal agenda superseded the comedy.

  • TlalocW 01/26/2012 10:38:00 PM

    Before she went crazy and a few years after her SNL gig, she came to Tulsa on her stand-up tour and did a good job, I thought. She took a picture of her doing a handstand in front of the giant praying hands outside Oral Roberts University, which unfortunately blights the city. I thought she was making fun of it/him, but if she's been pulled in by the Tea Party and dopes like Hannity, I'm sure she's an admirer of his snake-oil salesmanship. Her reaction to how illegals are going to vote for Obama, "Because... because of cheating!" is the normal flabbergasted type of response you get when you challenge any inane belief from the insane wing of the GOP these days. "What proof do you have he's a Muslim? Because... Because he just is! How do you know he wasn't born in America? Because... because, etc."

  • 01/26/2012 10:07:00 PM

    That seems impossible. Tammy Faye was actually quite tolerant towards gays and all people. Ms. Jackson seems to be the anti-Tammy Faye with so much hate in her heart and ignorance in her head. I hope she finds some semblance of peace one day.

  • observer2 01/26/2012 9:11:00 PM

    The scary thing is, there are people out there who believe the crazy things she says.

  • 01/26/2012 9:03:00 PM

    Regardless of Victoria's motivation to be in the public arena today, (and your 'infallible judgment' stating why she does what she does), are you blind to the "pompous" nature of the crimes going on in this nation, and how the stranglehold over the American people is only going to tighten its grip? And if so, what are you doing about it other than chastise me? You'd better come on board with some contribution for the preservation of this land’s liberty because its quickly eroding in the wake of tyranny. I merely exposed a fraction of the hypocrisies that are destroying this nation, dishonoring the nobility of the liberty that so many spilled their blood for us to have what we have in life. I know full well the vulnerability here and how Gus exploited it to make a single point: expose and publicly humiliate another's vulnerabilities for personal gain. In fact, Victoria should be commended for her courage to take the crap from so many and keep on sharing her convictions (whether for right or wrong). I wonder how long you'd last in that arena. By the way, there's nothing pompous about factual information.

  • Matildalee 01/26/2012 8:54:00 PM

    That's not thinking differently, that's some racist, insane ranting right there.

  • Fatty 01/26/2012 8:33:00 PM

    It's a shame to have to live in a super-rich country in the awesomest boro of the biggest metropolis, whole world at your fingertips and all that, dressing well eating well fucking well thinking well, but always beneath it all the nagging realization that there are people out there who think differently than you. Like WTF?

  • Budbear 01/26/2012 8:11:00 PM

    Get over your pompous self, Gary. She loves the attention this article gives her. Anything she says can be translated as,"LOOK AT ME,PLEASE".

  • Budbear 01/26/2012 8:05:00 PM

    Hey! They also have Chuck Norris and Gary Busey. How's that for celebrity firepower, Sally?

  • Movielover 01/26/2012 4:57:00 PM

    Poor Victoria Jackson. She's desperate for work and recognition, but she's basically just a zero and always was. Now she's older, fat and opening her mouth to say anything is always a mistake for her. Opening her legs wouldn't even get her anywhere now that she's an old sow.

  • 01/26/2012 4:22:00 PM

    That's their poster girl? HAHAHAHAHA! That's as good as it gets for them?? HAHAHAHAHA!!! Well, one has-been celebrity is better than no celebrities at all...HAHAHA!

  • 01/26/2012 4:18:00 PM

    Thanks Gus for the minutia of details describing (degrading) Victoria's life! She withheld nothing from you in this biography. Fodder for the atheist: that seems to be your forté to build self-esteem. You disqualify every good and decent thing she's ever done (regardless of any error in her judgment) as well as her sincere desires for America to get back on a Constitutional footing (again, regardless of any error on her part). This nation is going to crash and burn because imbeciles like you distract the citizens from uniting to work to achieve the desperately needed reformation from those religious elitists running America's government, banks and media [Talmudic Jews and Jesuits who sacrifice everyone on their altar of ambition] who are swindling every American into poverty while they purposely shed the blood of millions of innocent men, women and children around the world (cloaking 1st degree murder in the guise of virtue and national security), while men like you exalt your wit, intelligence and judgment over anyone who’s ordained by you to receive forty lashings in this literary inquisition. One day you’ll be in the grave, and we’ll see how your epitaph reads. I hope it reads, “Blessing the Lives of Others” and not what I just read focusing solely on another's humiliation.

  • 01/26/2012 3:55:00 PM

    Victoria who? And she was never funny, even 'back in the day'

  • 01/26/2012 3:45:00 PM

    Mocking Christians IS tailored to the liberal, secular (jewish) readership

  • 01/26/2012 3:21:00 PM

    And to think that I once thought this lunatic was funny. Now she is just pathetic. She is exactly the type of fringe nutcase that gives Christians a bad name. I am a Christian and I don't think anything like these people. I am about a liberal as they come politically. Most Christians of this variety forget the second of Jesus' commandments "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." This ONE sentence makes all of the hate that people like this spew so abhorrent to me and convinces me that they really AREN'T Christians at all.

  • 01/26/2012 2:55:00 PM

    there's no market for that humor because it isn't funny.

  • 01/26/2012 2:54:00 PM

    Her father is a homophobe who loves Fred Astaire and Burt Lancaster movies? That's funny.

  • 01/26/2012 2:41:00 PM

    Speaking of lying...if your points are legitimate then you would discuss them honestly. However, you do the fox point of view...you lie to make it true to your viewers. What prove do you have that illegal immigrants vote? Why would you focus on welfare fraud rather than those working people who are getting paid so little while working so hard that they would still need assistance. Why would you not focus on the exploitation of those people. Why would you compare our President Barack Obama to Castro, or the guy in china, or Saddam Hussein? What is the comparison (just the facts please) ? If you call yourself a christian, may I suggest you read and practice Exodus 23, and Proverbs.

  • J Rod 01/26/2012 2:34:00 PM

    I kept waiting for the punch line - like she was trying to Out-Colbert Colbert.

  • Elvis 01/26/2012 2:18:00 PM

    It's a miracle! She's transmogrifying into Tammy Faye Bakker!

  • 01/26/2012 12:04:00 PM

    these comments just prove that liberalism really is a mental illness

  • 01/26/2012 5:34:00 AM

    OK with that family, it explains things, not a lot, but things. I think a few drops on the balance beam explains the rest.

  • Silkroad 01/25/2012 11:30:00 PM

    Note to Victoria Jackson: There is no mainstream market for right-wing, fundamentalist humor in the comedy circuit. That's why you aren't getting any plum gigs. Note to Village Voice: Don't ever feature people like Victoria Jackson again. You have a liberal, secular readership, and you should tailor your articles to them.

  • Anon 01/25/2012 11:05:00 PM

    Victoria Jackson is a racist fundamentalist nitwit. As such, she is perfectly suited for the typical FOX NEWS viewer - at least those whose hearing aids are turned up loud enough to hear her drivel. If she's the best example of what the Tea Party has to offer rhetorically, then we should all breathe a sigh of relief.

  • Ed Kollin 01/25/2012 10:48:00 PM

    Deservedly or not the writer obviously spent some time on this article. It would be nice if you would characterized her views correctly. At best she is tangentially tea party. The very prejudiced wing of "Religious Right" and "Christian Conservative/Fundamentalist" is more accurate. She is pretty much all about religion. It is not "liberal Hollywood" its liberal and Jewish Hollywood. After endorsing Bachman (understandable female of similar age and political beliefs) does she endorse Paul nope it is Santorum. Yes the religious right has hijacked the Tea Party to a large degree and many Republicans are both Tea Parties and Religious Fundamentalists but at the end of the day the Tea Party at its heart is about economics. Giving a broad Tea Party/Bagger brush to any Republican and Libertarian movement is lazy journalism.

  • victoria jackson 01/25/2012 10:48:00 PM

    That's a lie that I got fired from SNL. How would Dolores Robinson know? She didn't represent me in 92. Ask my agent James Dixon at William Morris. Lorne said I could stay as long as I wanted to. Just want to keep the record straight.

  • 01/25/2012 9:48:00 PM

    A real shame she wasn't aborted.

  • Jethro 01/25/2012 8:57:00 PM

    Why do we care about Victoria Jackson again?

  • 01/25/2012 7:03:00 PM

    Seriously, VV? Sheesh.

  • Drew Hunkins 01/25/2012 6:49:00 PM

    LOL! EMC, great point!

  • Anonymous 01/25/2012 5:38:00 PM

    Why did you even talk to her, no one cares.

  • Steve 01/25/2012 4:35:00 PM

    What's sadder than she and her nut job family believe this stuff, but that she's using this to stay in the spotlight she was kicked out of because of her lack of talent.

  • 01/25/2012 3:59:00 PM

    No fucking way am I reading 6 pages about this crackpot.

 

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