Jane Harman, Michael Jackson's Family and Nancy Pelosi's Daughter: Saviors for Orange County Motel Kids and Foster Children?

Courtesy of HBO

​Wouldn't it be something if substantial help for Orange County "motel kids" and adult foster children comes not from local churches, Loretta Sanchez or the social-program slashing Orange County Board of Supervisors but a Los Angeles charity, Jermaine Jackson and the daughter of Nancy Pelosi?

The loud pops you just heard were from heads exploding at teabagger rallies across the county.

Courtesy of HBO

An image from Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County.

​The Orange County Register won awards for its special "Motel Children" section in 1998, exposing for the comfortably numb the hundreds of kids who reside in seedy Anaheim and Garden Grove motels where drugs, violence and poverty rule supreme.

The kids are not alright (still!) as we'll learn Monday when a documentary by Alexandra Pelosi premieres on HBO.

Given the current anti-government, screw-the-poor, cut-cut-cut fervor that have overtaken our politics, it will be interesting to see if any hearts and minds are changed by the documentary written, directed and filmed by the youngest daughter of the beloved/loathed speaker of the House.

Her subjects--who, remember, live among us in the county of plenty--include:

• four kids who live in a single motel room with their parents;

• an 8-year-old girl forced to shave her head to get rid of lice;

• friends, both 11, who live in separate motel rooms but both deal with bedbugs;

• a 7-year-old who is seen attending the funeral of his mother's boyfriend, who was beaten and killed;

• a widow who works at Disneyland and lives in a single motel room with her four kids and four small dogs;

• a 9-year-old girl who dreams of becoming a doctor despite sharing one room with her mother and another family with a newborn baby;

• and, a 6-year-old girl who sleeps between her parents in a queen-size motel bed and says the worst place she ever slept was in the bushes, which she called "embarrassing."

Then there are the sister and brother, ages 7 and 9, who moved into a motel with the family of a friend after their mother died. Asked if he has one wish for the summer, the boy answers, "To re-do my life."

Here's the trailer:



Here's how HBO describes the doc:

In Orange County, Cal., in some of America's wealthiest zip codes, some kids of the working poor live with their families in single motel rooms, attending a special school for transient children and playing in concrete parking lots in the shadow of the world's most famous amusement park.  Debuting MONDAY, JULY 26 (9:00-10:00 p.m. ET/PT), the timely HBO documentary HOMELESS:  THE MOTEL KIDS OF ORANGE COUNTY reveals the devastating impact of hard times on children of the working poor.  Alexandra Pelosi (HBO's Emmy®-winning "Journeys with George") directs.

Other HBO playdates for Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County are: July 29 (3:30 p.m., 12:30 a.m.) and 31 (1:30 p.m.), and Aug. 4 (9 a.m.) and 8 (4 p.m.). HBO2 playdates are: July 28 (8 p.m.) and Aug. 2 (11:30 a.m.) and 29 (2:30 p.m.).