Melanie Morgan, Super Mom

Reading about the spontaneous grassroots "You Don't Speak for Me, Cindy" tour organized by the spontaneous grassroots Move America Forward organization which was set up by the spontaneous grassroots Republican PR firm of Russo, Marsh and Rogers got me to thinking about Melanie Morgan, MAF's co-chairman.

I used to listen to Melanie when she was a reporter at KGO Radio in San Francisco. She was a good reporter with solid broadcasting skills and a pleasant demeanor. Then she left, and several years later came back to the Bay Area at right-wing talker KSFO. Something had changed; she was now a hate-spewing wingnut.

What the hell happened to her?

A lot, apparently, none of it good.

"I was in a terrible environment, [a] smoke-filled room, hardly taking care of myself. I was gambling right up until an hour before I gave birth."

After their baby son, CJ, was born, Morgan, who is now 42, swore that she would quit. "I think Morgan really believed that the arrival of our child was going to change everything," her husband Jack says.

It didn't. Two weeks after giving birth, she started gambling again. She brought CJ with her to the clubs. "He would sleep, and I would play," she recalls. "Then, when he would wake up and cry. That was the worst part because people around you don't particularly appreciate a crying child," she says.

The cocktail waitresses and the other gamblers helped take care of him. Her husband insisted that she stop bringing CJ to card games. So Morgan ordered her stepson Greg to babysit. Greg says that this was almost a daily occurrence.

By this time, Morgan was hiding from her husband. He put the baby in a car seat and drove around until he spotted his wife's car. One night, her husband confronted Morgan with her son. "I put the baby in the car seat in the center of the round poker table on the green felt with the chips and the cards and everything surrounding my son," he says. "And I looked at Morgan, and the other players were a little astonished. They're not used to seeing babies on the green felt," he says.

Sometimes he would bring the baby inside the card room and announce loudly, "Time to come home. Time to come home and be a mom and be my wife." It was, he says, "out of control."

One day, when Greg was looking after CJ, the baby wouldn't stop crying. He called her and asked her to come home. She refused. Greg ended up slapping CJ hard in the face, leaving a large bruise. A family doctor reported the bruise to child protective services, which ordered the couple to obtain family therapy. Morgan was told to quit gambling, or risk losing her baby.

Happily, Melanie got help for her gambling addiction and turned her life around. She is now a successful talk show co-host and a lie and hate spewing talking head on cable TV. But you have to wonder if her experience with no-good, meddling, liberal social workers might not have left her a tad bitter. Ya think?

And who would you rather have for your Mom - Melanie Morgan or Cindy Sheehan?