Tag Archives: scandals

controversies, lessons learned, marriage, narcissists, politics, religion, sex, sexism, slut shamers

Is he really like a male version of Monica Lewinsky?

A few days ago, I started reading Giancarlo Granda’s book, Off the Deep End: Jerry and Becki Falwell and the Collapse of an Evangelical Dynasty. For those who don’t know, Giancarlo Granda was the infamous “pool boy” who had a rather kinky affair with Becki Falwell, while Jerry Falwell, Jr. sat by and watched. The affair, which began in 2012, was in the news during the height of the pandemic. People were buzzing about how this powerful couple, supposedly evangelical Christians leading a very famous Baptist university in Virginia, were drinking, partying, and having wild sex with a young guy from Miami.

I’m nowhere near finished reading the book now, but I don’t think it’ll take too long to get through it. It started off kind of slow, but then jumped into high gear. Just this morning over breakfast, I got a couple of chapters further into the sordid saga. I read aloud to Bill and we talked about Granda’s story, as well as his excuses.

There’s also a Hulu documentary about this… Maybe I’ll watch it.

As I read about how the Falwells lured the handsome 20 year old man (circa 2012) into their world, I feel a strange mixture of disgust, shock, amazement, and basic empathy for Granda. He admits early on that he was fascinated with business and the idea of making a lot of money. He was a good looking, ambitious, and somewhat naive guy, looking to break in with the high rollers of Miami, and he took steps to make that idea come to fruition. That’s why he was working as a “pool boy” at the Fontainebleau, a luxury hotel in Miami, where rich and famous people hang out to relax and make business deals.

Granda didn’t know much at all about the Falwells when he was approached by Becki, an attractive brunette with brown eyes who was, at that time, in her late 40s. He just knew that anyone staying at the Fontainebleau had lots of money… enough to rent a daybed for $150, run up four or five figure restaurant and bar tabs and tip accordingly. Becki was fit and attractive, and Granda was a young man in his sexual prime. So when she invited him to meet her at a Days Inn, he agreed– even though she added that her husband wanted to watch them together.

I suppose he figured this was a one in a lifetime opportunity, one of life’s little adventures that can only come up for the young and daring. Maybe it would lead to a lucrative business deal. Like a lot of young folks who work in hospitality, Granda was focused on making money and connections. I’m sure the prospect of having sex with an older woman also appealed to him, even if Granda wasn’t too keen on the idea of her 50 year old husband watching them and jerking off in the shadows.

According to Granda, Becki quickly attached herself to him… and in a weird way, so did her husband. The two did all they could to stroke Granda’s ego, to get him to continue having the affair. Later, they invited Granda into their business dealings, and were it not for the inevitable implosion of the relationship, he might be a high ranking executive at Liberty University today. But there was a big scandal, which caused Jerry Falwell, Jr. and his wife to fall very publicly from grace.

As I was reading Granda’s book this morning, I remembered the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which happened in the late 1990s. Lewinsky, for those who don’t know, was an ambitious White House intern from California. She wasn’t exactly an innocent, blushing virgin when she encountered then President Bill Clinton. In 2ooo, Lewinsky was a guest on Larry King Live, and she admitted that when she was barely out of high school, she had an affair with a 40 year old married man. So, although she was a very young woman when she served as an unpaid White House intern in the 1990s, Monica had some experience. And she knew damned well Bill Clinton was, and still is, a married man when she engaged in oral sex with him in the Oval Office.

Still… I will concede that it was probably difficult for her to consider not giving Clinton what he wanted. It’s not like she didn’t have prior experience. She had big dreams and lofty goals, and Clinton was the President of the United States! I’m sure, in her mind, blowing the Commander in Chief might lead to good things for her future. Talk about landing a big fish! In that way, she and Giancarlo had something in common, I guess.

Of course, Monica in the wake of her scandal with Bill Clinton, wound up being the butt of jokes for years. People had no respect for her, and she was relentlessly slut shamed and lambasted for her inappropriate relations with Bill Clinton. By contrast, I don’t remember a lot of people being quite as harsh regarding the Clintons.

Sure, many Republicans were deriding Bill Clinton for being immoral and unfaithful. Curiously, a lot of those same people have few issues with Donald Trump’s disgusting philandering behaviors. But, I didn’t hear a lot of people hurling shame at Clinton for accepting sexual favors from a woman young enough to be his daughter. That attitude certainly didn’t come from people who voted for him. I remember a lot of them saying that Clinton’s sex life was irrelevant, as they ridiculed Lewinsky for sullying their hero’s reputation.

Eventually the whole Clinton/Lewinsky sex scandal thing… blew over (see what I did there?). We don’t talk that much about Monica Lewinsky now. She’s 50 years old and living in California. But Giancarlo Granda brought up her name in his book, and I couldn’t help but kind of nod… as I’d thought of her, too, as he related his story about how he got trapped in an extremely inappropriate sexual relationship with the wife of the now former president of a huge evangelical university in my home state of Virginia.

But then I thought about the situation some more. I determined that Granda’s situation with the Falwells actually wasn’t that much like Lewinsky’s with the Clintons. First of all, Granda didn’t really know much about the Falwells when he ran into them at his job in Miami. Monica Lewinsky, by contrast, certainly knew who Bill Clinton was. He was the very obviously married President of the United States.

While the Falwells are also married, Becki invited Granda to engage in sexual acts with her with her husband’s cooperation and express encouragement. Indeed, Jerry Falwell, Jr. actually watched the two of them doing their business. Hillary, on the other hand, didn’t consent to Monica’s affair with Bill Clinton.

Secondly, the relationship Monica Lewinsky had with Bill Clinton was relatively short lived. There were nine encounters between November 1995 and March 1997, none of which involved sexual intercourse. Granda writes that he never had intercourse with Becki Falwell, but there was everything else, and the relationship didn’t end when the sex part was over. Granda was involved in the Falwell’s business dealings, and continued an emotional relationship with them.

And finally… while I don’t condone rich, powerful people taking advantage of others who are much younger and ambitious, there is a difference between how men and women are viewed in these situations. I know a lot of people are trying to work toward gender equality in the United States, but the truth is, there’s still a powerful force trying to keep women down. A woman who has an affair with a married man is still often considered a homewrecking whore. A man who has an affair with a “cougar” is often considered a lucky guy. And a lot of people, looking at what Granda got out of the deal, would say that he was lucky. This was a young, handsome, healthy, ambitious man who was looking for a way into the rich and fabulous lifestyle. He found a way through the Falwells… and all he had to do was stroke Becki Falwell’s ego and keep her entertained.

Lest anyone misunderstand me– I’m not saying I think Granda is lucky, because I don’t. I’m saying other people– those who are a lot more cynical than I am– would say he was. I do think the Falwells took advantage of Granda and even victimized him on some level, but in fairness to the Falwells, Granda was an adult at age 20. He knew Becki Falwell was a guest at the hotel where he was working. He knew she was married. Like a lot of people, he let his desire for money, power, and sexual gratification override his common sense. Yes, he was young and naive, and the Falwells were rich and powerful, but he had to know that on some level, what he was doing was wrong, and could potentially to lead to disaster. The Falwells actually brought Granda into their family and treated him like a son– which is, in its own way, especially gross. If he was like a son to them, that would make Becki like his “mom”. Eew.

Monica Lewinsky certainly wasn’t innocent in her situation, either. But she got a hell of a lot more flak for what she did than Granda ever could. The only reason people are talking about Granda today is because he wrote a bombshell book. It’s not even a super popular book, from what I can tell. People were making trashy Monica Lewinsky jokes years after her affair with the former POTUS was revealed. When she resurfaced a few years ago to give a TED Talk, the jokes and criticisms began anew. While her notoriety helped her in some ways, it also significantly hindered her, particularly when she wanted to be hired for certain jobs in communications and marketing.

A lot of people were snarking about this when it first came out… and had very little empathy for Monica’s plight.

I don’t know what leads some people to have sexual relationships with people much older than they are. Monica was 18 years old when she got involved with the 40 year old man. What did they have in common? My guess is that she was looking for someone mature who could provide emotional and financial security of some kind. While it was legal for her to be with a man that age, my guess is that the guy manipulated her. Later, when she had a chance to do sexual favors for Clinton, it probably didn’t seem that wrong or inappropriate to her. Again, it wasn’t like she didn’t have any prior experience.

Granda writes that he was manipulated, groomed, and victimized, too. But he freely admits that his motivation was making money and getting an inroad into the high level real estate business world. In both cases, I think the young people involved were left with significant regrets. Granda claims he was “used”, but I would submit that he used the Falwells, too. He saw them as a ticket to financial success in the business world, even though they were a married couple and in charge of a huge Christian university.

I hope to be reviewing Granda’s book soon. I just wanted to write about this theme while it was fresh in my head. Granda does bring up Lewinsky and compares his situation to hers. There are some similarities, but I think the lingering effects of Monica’s case were much more serious in the long run. She’s a woman who got involved with one of the most recognizable and respected people on the planet. Clinton never made her part of his family, or brought her into the family business. When it was over between them, she was branded a homewrecker, while Clinton’s reputation wasn’t damaged that much at all. In fact, check out this sympathetic song…

Eric Schwartz says Clinton got a blow job… which is not so “bad” in the grand scheme of things. If Giancarlo Granda had been a woman who had sex with Jerry Falwell, Jr., I’d pretty much guarantee the people of Liberty University would be calling Granda a “slut” and forgiving Falwell.

Granda is a man who didn’t even really know much about the Falwells before he fell into their trap. My guess is that even before this scandal happened, Jerry Falwell, Jr. had far fewer admirers than either Bill or Hillary Clinton still have. And some of us– myself included– had never even heard of Becki Falwell before this situation came to light. But this story is just a reminder that a lot of people in high places are probably folks you wouldn’t actually want to know… because so many of them got to where they are by doing yucky, hypocritical, immoral things.

The Bible even tells us this…

“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Matthew 19:24

I’m not a particularly religious person myself, and clearly neither are the Falwells. But they sure had no problem using the God fearing to fly the Liberty University corporate jet to get to the Fontainebleau, where they met “poor”, “hapless” Giancarlo, looking for a ticket to get to where they were. It makes me glad I decided to go to a “godless” public university, where I had the complete freedom to do as I chose, and my tuition dollars didn’t go toward satisfying the former university president’s exotic and bizarre sexual desires. Jerry Falwell, Jr.’s conduct sure doesn’t seem like very Christlike behavior to me.

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controversies, religion

Repost: Ernest Angley’s descent into scandal…

I’m reposting this entry from my original blog dated October 15, 2014. Ernest Angley has since died, and I’m leaving this as/is, because I don’t feel like editing it today. It’s being reposted because it was a very popular post, and I want to keep it for posterity.

If you read this blog on a regular basis, you know that I like to watch religious television programming sometimes.  It’s not because my soul needs saving.  I just find it hilarious.  Now that I’m in Germany again and have no access to the religious channels that plague most American satellite and cable systems, I’ve gotten away from watching TBN and the BYU channel.  I can, however, still watch Ernest Angley, because his show is on the Internet and available everywhere.

To be honest, I find Angley a pretty dull speaker and his toupee is annoying.  I watch his show because of the shitty musicians.  I mean, they aren’t bad musicians in terms of their skill.  It’s just that the music is so corny and lame.  It’s mostly country and bluegrass flavored and apparently written in house, no doubt so that Angely’s ministry doesn’t have to pay anyone royalties.  The songs are often kind of graphic, with lyrics about being “washed in the blood of Jesus”, as if Jesus Christ’s blood was some kind of heavy duty soul detergent.  Angley’s ministry is extremely protective of its “intellectual property” (and I use that term very loosely).  You’ll never find any critical videos of Angley on YouTube because they get copyright claimed at the drop of a hat.  But you can watch it on the Internet and cringe like I do. 

An example of the music on Ernest Angley’s show.
And it looks like one of the soloists in the above clip is also quite engaging on camera…

Until yesterday, I mostly thought of this “ministry” as kind of cornball and stupid.  But then a Facebook friend posted an article about a huge scandal erupting at Angley’s Cuyahoga Falls church in Ohio.  The article my friend posted was a rather slanted blog type thing, so I decided to go to the article it was based upon, one in a series on Angley’s Grace Cathedral ministry posted in Akron’s Beacon Journal.  Reporter Bob Dyer interviewed a number of people who had left the church, including a former pastor named Brock Miller who left the ministry on July 4th.  Miller contends that for seven years, Angley “violated” him by being sexually inappropriate.  Angley claims he was giving the man a “special anointing”.

Apparently, people who leave Angley’s church are shunned and criticized by name during worship services.  Mr. Miller is being accused of being a drug addict and liar by Angley’s associate pastor, Chris Machamer, who is a star of every telecast as a “guest host”.  I can barely stand to listen to Machamer speak because he’s so fake and plastic and has no charisma.  Angley himself claims that Miller is an adulterer.  Machamer claims that Miller just wants to take over the church once Angley finally kicks the bucket.

I don’t know what the whole truth is, but there are enough stories by people claiming that Angley was doing bad stuff that I tend to believe the good televangelist and his henchmen are simply engaging in character assassination and trying to discredit the victims by claiming that they have serious character flaws.  Miller reportedly didn’t initiate this expose of Grace Cathedral and its apparently toxic environment.  In fact, Bob Dyer writes that Miller repeatedly refused interview requests and had nothing to gain by accusing Angley of being highly inappropriate.  Think about it.  You’re a man who believes in God and has been taught to keep your dirty laundry out of sight.  Why would a guy like Miller want to speak publicly about allowing another man to examine his genitals, especially if he’s a conservative Christian?  I’m guessing that Mr. Miller is pretty humiliated by all of this, but finally felt he had to do something to preserve his dignity.  Indeed, Miller emphasizes that he’s not accusing Angley of homosexual behavior, but of “violating” him.

Because Miller lived in church owned housing, after he went public with his story, he and his wife had to move.  Miller and his wife were both homeschooled and neither got education beyond that.  They don’t have jobs or qualifications to work elsewhere.  Now they are living with another family member and this very embarrassing and personal news is being broadcast worldwide.  I think Brock Miller was brave to speak out.  It would have been easy to just wait it out until Angley finally croaks, but he couldn’t take it anymore.  And good on him.  He shined a light on his abuser.  Indeed, he’s not the first to say something.  Here’s another person’s account of what it was like to be raised in Angley’s “church” for 12 years. 

I can only guess that a lot of musicians attend Angley’s church because he likely gives them work.  Jobs for musicians can be hard to find and churches can be good places to find steady, gainful employment.  Angley gives these folks plenty to do, too.  There’s one guy who plays in the Gospel Five– good looking guy– who was probably a band geek in high school.  He plays drums and saxophone and sings pretty well, better than most of the other guys singing with him.  There’s a good looking bass guitar player who can’t sing very well, but plays his bass in the cornball rockabilly style Angley seems to favor. 

I notice some nepotism, too.  Chris Machamer’s relative (I assume she’s his wife, but I don’t know for certain), Maria, is a singer,  She’s very small and meek looking and seems to try hard to sound like Alison Krauss.  And I believe another relative is also involved in the church.  I’ve seen her on camera talking about fundraising for “missions”.

Angelia Oborne, a woman who was a member of the church with her husband, claims that Angley encouraged followers to have abortions and vasectomies.  My heart goes out to Oborne, since she and her husband can’t have kids.  He had a vasectomy at Angley’s urging and now she’s 35 and doesn’t think she can conceive.  Since my husband also had a vasectomy and it was later reversed, I understand her sorrow.  My husband’s reversal was done for free and I was 31 years old at the time.  We didn’t conceive, and I was sad about it for awhile.  Now that I’m older, it matters less.  But she’s still young enough and it is heartbreaking that they made this poor decision while under the influence of cult thinking.  And now they have to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives.  Angley claims the world is going to hell, so his followers are encouraged to avoid having children.  ETA: In 2023, two links from the original post no longer work. I have unlinked them.   

I will be watching for updates on this story.  Seems like sooner or later, these televangelists get exposed somehow.  This has been a long time coming.  ETA: Indeed, there was more to the story, which I posted about later. I will probably repost my comments about the scandal later.

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book reviews, lessons learned

A review of Guilty Admissions: The Bribes, Favors, and Phonies behind the College Cheating Scandal, by Nicole LaPorte…

A few days ago, I wrote a blog post about a young lady in Atlanta who applied to 70 colleges and got into 54 of them. That post, titled “I would not want to be 18 years old in 2023“, was inspired by comments I read about Daya Brown’s decision to apply to so many colleges. It made me recall my own days as a high school senior, trying to decide where I would go for my undergraduate degree. I remember those days were pretty challenging, especially since I was mostly navigating the whole process by myself.

When I was in high school, we didn’t have the Internet readily available. I went to a rural, public high school, with four guidance counselors handling about 1600 students. My parents, already well into middle age, with three already “grown and flown” daughters, weren’t all that invested in helping me find the “right” college. No one, other than me, pressured me to get excellent grades. I didn’t take any prep courses for the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test).

I don’t even think anyone looked over my applications before I submitted them and checks for application fees to Dr. Porter, the guidance counselor I barely knew. I don’t think Dr. Porter even said a word to me about where I was applying, and whether or not they were “appropriate” choices for me. I think I would have done fine at the other schools I applied to, but I was competing against people with better test scores and grades, and more school activities.

Consequently, I had one choice in the fall of 1990– the one school that admitted me out of the four I applied to. It turned out to be a fortuitous choice for me, as I did well at Longwood College (now Longwood University). But maybe if I’d had someone like Rick Singer in my pocket, I might have gone somewhere else… Somewhere a lot better known, more prestigious, and more expensive.

In March 2019, I was just as shocked as anyone when I saw the photos of actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman being arrested by the FBI in their fancy homes. A lot of people were outraged when they heard about what the famous actresses had done for their daughters, but they certainly weren’t alone that day. They simply had the misfortune of being the faces of the Varsity Blues scandal, a “sting” operation that resulted in dozens of arrests of wealthy parents who wanted a “side door” to prestigious universities for their children. They’d hired Rick Singer, a hustler who had convinced them that if they did what he said and paid enough money, their little darlings would be accepted to universities like the University of Southern California, Yale, and Georgetown. The parents were unaware that after years of hustling, Rick Singer was about to go down… and they would be going with him as their children, most of whom were completely unaware of any shenanigans, would watch in horror and humiliation.

I see I downloaded Nicole LaPorte’s book, Guilty Admissions: The Bribes, Favors, and Phonies behind the College Cheating Scandal, in early March 2021, about two weeks after it was published on February 23, 2021. I just finished reading it this morning, after some concerted effort. It’s not that it wasn’t an interesting read. On the contrary, I was often flabbergasted by LaPorte’s juicy stories about Singer and the many people who were caught in his web. It wasn’t just parents who got burned by his scam, either. Singer talked coaches, “smart” people, and admissions officials into going “rogue”, accepting money Singer coaxed out of powerful and wealthy parents to make sure their children got into the “best” schools.

LaPorte explains the high pressure environment of southern California, where even very young children are pressured to attend the best private schools that will give them the best shot at going to a big name university. As I read Guilty Admissions, I learned about elite private high schools like Buckley, Marlborough, Marymount, and Harvard-Westlake, all of which had their own vibes.

Each of those private schools have highly qualified guidance counselors, many of which had encountered Rick Singer’s “independent consultation” work and weren’t too keen on their students using it. Singer specialized in gaming the system, and as it’s become incredibly obvious, wasn’t honest in his dealings. But it hadn’t seemed like Singer had started out that way. In the beginning, he seemed more like a legitimate operator who actually spent time with the teens he worked with, helping them get better grades and test scores themselves, rather than falsifying their college applications, lying about their races, paying people to take their college boards for them, or inventing sports teams for them to claim.

Guilty Admissions is definitely a page turner. LaPorte writes well, and to a “nobody” like me, the story is astonishing enough that I don’t need to be “sold” on it. However, there are a few glitches in the book. For instance, at one point, LaPorte refers to “Seaton Hall University”, when she means “Seton Hall”. It was probably a typo, rather than a reflection of LaPorte’s knowledge or lack thereof of the subject matter, but given that she was referring to a university, that mistake was a very noticeable whopper. I also want to point out that it’s already 2023, so some of the information in the book is dated, which is to be expected. Thankfully, we have the Internet for updates.

However, LaPorte includes plenty of footnotes, photos, and other useful tools for readers who want to learn more. I got the sense that she interviewed a lot of key people in this scandal, even as she also watched the same news coverage we all did. When I finished reading Guilty Admissions, I wanted to read more, from a different perspective. I ended up downloading 2020’s Unacceptable: Privilege, Deceit & the Making of the College Admissions Scandal, by Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz. I don’t know when I’ll get around to reading that book, but at least one Amazon reviewer wrote that he thought it was a better book with a different perspective. LaPorte mostly focuses on southern California and the University of Southern California, with some mentions of other elite universities like Yale and Georgetown. I think it’s important to realize that there were more people and schools involved. This is a widespread issue.

I mentioned in my previous post that I had the “privilege” of being a temp in the admissions office at the College of William & Mary in the late 90s. William & Mary is a highly selective school, so I saw a lot of materials from very exclusive and expensive private high schools. It really opened my eyes… and that was in 1998! Nowadays, I think the prospect of choosing a college is worse than it was back then. So many young people think they need to go to a “brand name” college! It’s absolutely crazy!

LaPorte also adds that COVID-19, ironically, has really messed up the college game. Fewer young adults are opting for college now, as it’s gotten so expensive. COVID-19 made the experience less appealing, as students were expected to wear masks and take classes on Zoom, rather than have the immersive experience so many of us older folks have had. I often like to say that every cloud has its silver lining. What I mean is that every situation, no matter how horrible, has the potential to bring about something positive. I don’t think COVID-19 is, overall, a great thing at all… but maybe it has acted as sort of a bucket of water of sorts– cooling off the insane pressure to attend a certain university, or even to go to university at all.

I certainly don’t regret going to college or grad school. I got a lot out of both experiences. But the cost of attending is getting harder and harder to justify, especially for people who end up like I have. 😉 I just think it’s sad that so many people seem to think that it’s worth risking prison to get their kids into certain universities, especially when I know from personal experience that there are MANY excellent schools of higher learning in the United States. I think the Varsity Blues scandal is a good reminder to us all that chasing an image can lead to ruin… or at least uncomfortable familiarity with the sensation of wearing handcuffs outside of a movie set or a bedroom.

Anyway, I would recommend Nicole LaPorte’s book, Guilty Admissions. I’d give it four stars out of five, and recommend additional resources. I look forward to comparing this book with Unacceptable by Korn and Levitz, whenever I get around to reading it.

As an Amazon Associate, I get a small commission from Amazon on sales made through my site.

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book reviews

Kathleen Bradley on being the first black Barker Beauty…

A few months ago, I got on a brief kick of watching old episodes of The Price is Right on YouTube. I grew up watching Bob Barker host the iconic game show, which came on every weekday morning at 11:00 in my time zone. All through my childhood, I watched Barker’s Beauties, Janice Pennington, Dian Parkinson, and Holly Hallstrom show off prizes and act out the Showcase Showdowns in whatever costume was dreamed up for that day.

At some point, I did some Googling to find out what had happened to Barker’s Beauties and discovered that Kathleen Bradley, who was originally hired in 1990, had written a book entitled Backstage At The Price Is Right: Memoirs of a Barker Beauty. Based on the reviews posted at Amazon.com, I didn’t have especially high expectations for the book’s quality. But I do love a good trashy tell all, so I decided to order it.

Bradley, who was once part of the musical group The Love Machine, had gone into modeling after her foray into the music business. In 1990, the powers that be at The Price Is Right had decided they needed to diversify their stable of Barker’s Beauties. They decided to hire a black model to capture the interest of black viewers. Bradley writes that she was one of several women who were considered and the audition process took many months. In the end, she got the gig, and was shocked by how little it paid. However, she did appreciate the hours, which were mostly daytime and gave her time with her daughter, Cheyenne, and stepdaughter, Dior.

Bradley was a Barker Beauty for about ten years. During that time, she witnessed a number of scandals and lawsuits. Dian Parkinson famously had an affair with Bob Barker and later sued him for sexual harassment. Holly Hallstrom also sued Barker after she was fired for refusing to testify on Barker’s behalf in Parkinson’s suit. Bradley and Hallstrom was also seriously injured on the set once, when a large appliance fell on them during a showcase skit. Bradley explains that some people felt like The Price Is Right was cursed in some way, as Janice Pennington was also hurt once, when a camera hit her. Nevertheless, despite the scandals and Barker’s alleged lecherous, ruthless, and cheapskate behavior, she stuck with the show.

Bob Barker tells his beauties to go higher, higher, higher…
Bob Barker a pervert? Nah…

Bradley is apparently multi-talented, having worked as a model, actress, and singer. Her book isn’t terribly written, but it probably should have had at least one or two rounds with an editor. I found a few strange sentence constructions as well as odd word usages. At one point, she uses the word “excitingly” instead of “excitedly”. I also found her writing style to be rather affected and overly formal for such a salacious book. However, I do give Bradley credit for writing a comprehensive book that “delivers the goods” as one reviewer on Amazon put it. She does kind of make Bob Barker out to be a sleaze, and reminds readers that people aren’t always as they seem, especially people in show business. On the other hand, people who love Bob Barker may not enjoy that aspect of Bradley’s book. Bradley also includes some information about the other models. For instance, she wrote a chapter about Janice Pennington’s second husband, Friedrich “Fritz” Stammberger, who disappeared in 1975 while working with the CIA in Afghanistan.

Barker’s Beauties on Vicki Lawrence’s talk show. Check out Parkinson’s face when Lawrence asks about “dirt” on Bob Barker.

One thing about this book that turned me off is Bradley’s penchant for bragging. She often refers to her beauty and talent, and has a tone that is kind of haughty. I didn’t get the sense that she was a “down-to-earth” person. However, I guess that’s to be expected from someone who works in show business. It’s not known for being an industry full of down-to-earth people.

I’m not sorry I read Kathleen Bradley’s book. I thought it was basically informative and somewhat interesting. I didn’t think it was extremely well-written, but I appreciated that she included plenty of photos and some dirt on the Golden Era of The Price Is Right. Bradley did give me a perspective on how difficult and even dangerous the job of modeling can be, although I kind of rolled my eyes when she wrote that working on The Price Is Right was one of the most “prestigious” modeling jobs in the industry. I think that was taking it a bit far, although I suppose it depends on whom you ask and what constitutes prestige. Some people would find modeling for Vogue more prestigious than showing off cough medicine or dishwashers on a game show. On another note, I never thought anyone could fill Bob Barker’s shoes, but I think Drew Carey has done a great job taking over hosting duties… not that I can watch the show over here in Germany.

If you’re curious about the Barker era and one model’s experience as the first black Barker Beauty, I would recommend Bradley’s book. But, if you’re looking for stellar writing from a likable author, it might be better to pass on this one.

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