Has your mom eaten today?
  April 28, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, There’s been another audio leak from the much-anticipated “Summer House” reunion, and at this point, Bravo just needs to stream all 12 hours of whatever they filmed, editing schmediting, we will watch it raw. In today’s newsletter, we look at what moms are giving up to feed their children. Plus, the enduring, questionable allure of Michael Jackson. Free the footage, Shannon Melero  WHAT’S GOING ONCook a meal for Mother’s Day: A March survey of more than 1,000 mothers in the United States conducted by the group No Kid Hungry found that moms are struggling to feed their children. According to the findings, one in five moms has skipped a meal or eaten less so that their child could have something to eat. That includes a surprising 20% of middle-income moms, and even a handful of “higher-income” ones—but, as always, lower-income mothers are feeling the squeeze most. “That’s a pattern, and it has a name: maternal sacrifice as a survival strategy,” says Lillian Singh, senior VP of family economic mobility at Share Our Strength, the non-profit that started the No Kid Hungry campaign. The numbers quantify what many parents have already been feeling: It’s hard to be a parent these days—more than any other decade in recent memory, according to more than 60% of the moms surveyed. In fact, nearly a quarter of women surveyed admitted to taking on debt in order to afford food. Even psychologists concur that parenting has become more difficult over the last few years for many reasons, including cost-of-living rises and stagnation in pay. Singh also points to anti-parent policies as a factor: “Proposed SNAP cuts”—like the one happening right now under the Big Beautiful Bill budget—“don’t just reduce a benefit,” she says. “They remove the floor that makes those small acts of sacrifice survivable…The moms in our network aren’t asking for more. They’re asking for less to be taken away.”  The man in the mirror: The biopic Michael, which follows Michael Jackson’s career, is doing record-breaking numbers at the box office despite the fact that its protagonist was the subject of years of molestation allegations (including some published just last week). It’s not because it’s critically acclaimed: The film has a 38% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but a 97% audience score. (Whereas with the 2019 documentary Finding Neverland, which profiled two of his accusers, those ratings are reversed.) Why the disparity? It’s complicated. Critics are struggling with the erasure of all of the complexities that made Michael, Michael—but that erasure seems to appeal to audiences. The film, produced by the Jackson estate and starring one of his nephews, Jaafar Jackson, glosses over nearly all of the difficulties Michael Jackson faced in his life and instead presents a pristine, idealistic version of the King of Pop. Put simply, the Jackson family is giving the people the version of Michael Jackson that fans loved most—the man on the stage—while completely ignoring the literal man in the mirror. Beyond preserving his legacy for profit, the Jackson estate has been working tirelessly for years on restoring the idea of Michael Jackson’s childlike purity, going so far as to have Leaving Neverland pulled from HBO and most streaming platforms four years ago. For the most part, this relentless rehabilitation has worked; given the wild success of the Broadway show MJ, the Cirque de Soleil show that sold millions of tickets, and a social media army ready to defend his legacy, Jackson appears too big to fail. Even the social stigma has faded: You’re more likely to see people happily bopping to “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” than to R. Kelly’s “Ignition (Remix)” —neither of which I will link to because I’m not tossing any extra streaming pennies to these men. And that’s really the question at the heart of the Michael divide. Can art ever truly be separated from the artist, and who exactly are we willing to do that kind of separation for? This film brings that quandary a step further by eliminating the person and focusing solely on the art. What viewers are left with, if Rotten Tomatoes scores are to be believed, is an enjoyable musical experience devoid of any analysis or acknowledgment of the costs of that art. But certainly, there are adult survivors of childhood abuse seeing all of this dialogue and wondering when art will be less important than their lived experiences. AND:
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