Garbage television addiction update

Although I proudly bragged in Monday's post about being a bad bitch, goodness mercy, folks... ain't no way I could measure up to the current crop of REAL HOUSEWIVES on the Bravo network. I'm currently watching both the New York and Orange County editions, she admitted, embarrassed. These shows put one in mind of slo-mo trainwrecks; gaudy, narcissistic, hedonistic, expensive, collagen-injected, botoxed, designer-clad, exquisitely-decorated, very thin trainwrecks. On another level, they are one long commercial for capitalism as The Entire Lifestyle, the Alpha and the Omega. (The human flaws, then, are also a manifestation of the lifestyle.)

Unfortunately, this season's bitchitude doesn't reach the mythic levels of RHO-New Jersey. RHONJ was totally in a class by itself, featuring such Golden Moments of Reality TV as Teresa's now-legendary table-flipping routine (even satired on SOUTH PARK), hair-pulling at chi-chi country clubs, psychic-healing by telephone and lots of other suburban fun. The New York/California crowd simply can't measure up to the cheesiness of our beloved Jersey Girls. You could wait all season and NOBODY will pull anyone else's hair, or their weave either. (sigh) Now, the Atlanta gals, especially NeNe, have engaged in some hair-pulling, and that show understands WHY WE WATCH. Don't be tardy for the party!

The one consistent sign of intelligence in these shows, Bethenny Frankel, got her own (well-deserved) spin-off TV show on Bravo. I enjoy watching her wittily fuss about her new baby, hubby, business, in-laws, etc, but it certainly isn't as much fun as listening to her dish about the other New York Housewives in her very honest, snarky, funny, acerbic, barbed fashion. And the fights! The Bethenny vs Kelly bouts were almost as good as Teresa turning over tables in posh restaurants. Any chance of a rematch between you girls? Your fans demand it!

Will Kelly guest star on Bethenny's show, maybe do a bunny-boiler routine? Not a stretch at all, and it's certainly better than Kelly pretending to be a reporter; Brenda Starr on crack. (And we can all do without more of THAT, please.) Yall need to jazz this stuff up, or I'ma quit watching.

Teresa raised the bar and now we want housewives attacking each other. And what's next? "Housewife snuff"?*

The ratings would go through the roof.



*I am suddenly reminded of the amusing short story "The National Pastime" by Norman Spinrad. Can't find a link.

Don't be tardy for the party: Real Housewives of Atlanta thread

I can't restrain myself from this any longer.

Yes, it's the REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ATLANTA THREAD!

They're my favorite 'franchise' of Real Housewives so far.

Although I love my mindless trash-TV, Tami went and made it all political by alerting me to the fact that some people think the Atlanta housewives are especially low-rent. Hey, now! That IS going to piss me off! I take that as dissing the south, too--not just racist claptrap. (And let us be clear: singling out RHOA as somehow "worse"--IS racist claptrap.)

True Confessions--I've watched every single one of the "Real Housewives" series on the BRAVO network: Orange County, New York City (which earned its own DEAD AIR thread as well!), New Jersey and Atlanta. And I am here to say they are all equally narcissistic, dopey, solipsistic, shallow, silly, loud, screeching, self-centered, etc etc etc. If they weren't (as I said at Tami's), it wouldn't be "Real Housewives"--we tune in to our favorite TV shows for a reliable formula, as reliable as Monday Night Football or Wheel of Fortune. We want our narcissistic, screeching housewives! RHOA is 80% African-American, because Atlanta is.

Tami writes:

To be sure, the women on RHOA are no role models. They are alternately bullying, narcissistic, back-stabbing, money-grubbing, cliquey, disloyal, arrogant, self-involved, willfully ignorant, poorly spoken, wasteful and tackily nouveau riche. The show features street fights, wig tugging, name dropping, pole dancing, sugar daddy-funded goodies, “baller” fetishizing, vanity business projects, cattiness, loud arguments in nice restaurants (and nice offices..and nice homes), and whole lot of “flossing” and faux importance. Whether editing or reality is to blame, the women read like gross caricatures of the bourgie set, garnished with a little Jerry Springer.

But here’s the thing: These traits are not solely the hallmark of the black housewives of Atlanta. Reality shows are cast and scripted for drama, and the “Real Housewives” franchise serves up plenty of it with each and every season. So I find it curious that these five, black women are singled out as egregiously off-the-hook. Oh, I’m not saying that the white Real Housewives don’t catch hell. Half the thrill of watching all the RH series is snarking on the excess and ignorance afterwards. My problem is HOW the Atlanta wives are criticized.

A foray into online coverage, blogs and TV forums like the ones on Television Without Pity will uncover frequent use of the word “ghetto” and “hood,” references to this or that housewife looking “like a man,” hints that the housewives are high-classed “hos”–promiscuous, scheming she-devils hot on the trail of big money, snark about big booties, talk of how the women are embarrassing black folks. Hmmm…sounds kind of like the type of criticism often thrown at black women, even those who act demurely and properly. (Have you seen the stuff folks say about Michelle Obama and her daughters?) Frankly, I have more problem with this sort of racialized analysis than I do with anything that happens on “Real Housewives of Atlanta.”

I don't usually read TV-blogs and forums and therefore didn't know this racialized analysis of RHOA was going on. It just makes we wanna holler. (sigh)

There is no appreciable "difference" between any of the Real Housewives shows, except style and location. Personally, I like the clothes, shoes, houses, stores, restaurants and gewgaws from the Atlanta group best, too. (I figure this is a southern thing, and I am happy to see some variation in style.) I love how Atlanta looks, always have. And like Anderson Cooper, I am also passionate about NeNe Leakes, who has great natural comic timing and presence. She could be a real TV-star on her own. (She IS the Joneses!) When she gets mad and gets in people's faces with her stream-of-consciousness rants, she reminds me of my own mother, who would get seriously ramped up on amphetamines and do the same thing. (Later, drug-free, my mother continued this behavior whenever angry; it was as if this trait had embedded itself in her personality because it served her so well in dealing with her four husbands.) And similarly, when NeNe gets mad, watch out, people!

Because NeNe reminds me so much of my mother, I did not see her as especially "black"... and was unaware of the criticisms she has received for being the most "ghetto"--which I first realized when one of the women on the show said it. I can find these rather vicious criticisms all over the net; here is an example from one such blog:

NeNe Leakes “Ghetto” is the definition of the word. Loud, Country and Tacky! You can tell she hooked up with her guy “Who’s clearly old enough to be her father!” by givin’ up the ghetto head a.s.a.p and getting a baby in there quick! Loud and Obnoxious are the two words that best describe her.

And all us Loud, Country and Tacky people really LOVE NeNe, who reminds us our of Loud, Country and Tacky mamas.

Tami writes:

I asked in my post about RHOA whether white people were spending time agonizing over the shameful antics of the Bravo brand's white housewives and their families. I doubt it. I don't think white people feel the burden of the Orange County wives' rude, dull and ambitionless adult children. I don't think they read the shallowness of New York City wives as reflective of white culture. I don't think all white people flinched when one New Jersey protagonist expressed the desire to open a chain of car wash/strip clubs. Nor will white people be judged by other white people based on the behavior of a bunch of reality show stars. Black people, of course, are judged by the actions of other random black folks--from Flavor Flav to Marion Barry to Serena Williams to Barack Obama. Our fortunes can rise and fall depending what black person is in the public eye and what they are doing. This is, of course, wrong and unfair. Why then, do black people join in enforcing this unequal standard?

Look, I am not naive. I am, unfortunately, evaluated by mainstream America not just on my own merits, but by perceptions of other black people whom I cannot control. The same is true for all people of color. But I feel strongly that the way to combat this problem is to aggressively challenge the biases of the mainstream, not to fold to injustice by playing behavior cop with my brothers and sisters.

I don't think the Real Housewives of Orange County represent me in any way as a white woman, and it would never occur to me to think so. Likewise, can we allow the Real Housewives of Atlanta to be who they are without the accompanying idea that they "represent" anyone but themselves?

(PS: And what do you think of the show?)

Odds and Sods: One damn thing after another edition

My health has taken an unexpected dive, and I find I do not want to blog about this, for a bloody change. This is partly a desire for privacy, and partly a fear that my (seemingly endless) aging problems are just getting boring. (I mean, you know, they bore ME after awhile too.) And chronic illnesses/injuries are part of aging, most assuredly.

As Harry Truman famously said, "The problem with history is that it's just one damn thing after another." Ohhhh, how true that is. And aging is part of history, or IS the process of history, as manifested in each individual.

I am home from work, drinking Kombucha to boost my immune system, wasting time arguing on Feminist Critics, in which I unexpectedly had to defend The Holy Trinity (who'd a thunk it?), downloading purty photos, such as the one above (since I have lots of Flickr space left!), and watching my new fave-rave NeNe on The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

The REAL HOUSEWIVES are exactly the women some of the Feminist Critics posters really HATE: unemployed, fluttering about, spending money, madly lunching before storming every boutique in Buckhead, all while chattering entertainingly for the rest of us. I regard them as an exclusive subculture out of a Jacqueline Susann novel, certainly nothing like the majority of housewives in any locality. Which is why people watch the show, after all. But several of the FC crowd seem to believe this type of rich, spoiled, bon-bon eating housewife represents the majority of American wives.

Not hardly. If so, we wouldn't be watching them as if they are an exotic species, would we?

***

My heart's on fire, for Elvira. Also my new profile pic, for now!

(Note: I simply could not start a story about Emmy without a kitty picture. This was just not possible to do.)

I realized after writing my Proposition 8 piece yesterday, that I had not been specific enough about why I think gay marriage is a crucial civil right, but simply took that knowledge for granted on the part of the reader. And then, I came upon Zan's entry, below, which brings the issue into sharp relief in a very up-close-and-personal way. At her blog, Butterfly Cauldron, Zan misses her partner, Emmy, and wishes she could stay in the country longer:

If our immigration laws were decent, if they let citizens sponsor same-sex partners, if we had a visa for people who were looking for work and had willing sponsors, if if if. But we don't. There's no way for people in same-sex relationships to bring their partners into the country legally. And, when Emmy finds work here and gets a work visa, she'll only be able to stay in the country legally as long as her job lasts.

There is a chance, because she is trans and still legally male, that we can get her here on a fiance visa. A chance. But when it comes out that she is trans, it's likely that the visa would be denied. We could just get married and hope for the best, but it's the same situation. The visa would likely be denied, because it is the policy of the US Government to deny transgendered people the right to immigrate on a spousal visa. So, even if we got married legally (which we could in Louisiana, because Louisiana does not legally recognize transgendered people as their true gender until SSR has been preformed), we would still not be allowed to live together full-time in this country.

How is this fair? How is this even the slightest bit right? And it's so very easy to remedy. Legalize same-sex marriage at the federal level. Extend to all couples, regardless of gender, the legal right to marry. Immigration rights, insurance rights, visitation rights, adoption rights, full and complete equality under the law. If the genders of the people marry did not marry, Emmy and I could apply for a fiance visa and be certain it would be granted. We could know that our separation was not only temporary, it had a definate end date. It wouldn't keep me from crying, but it would help me to know when I could hold her again.

(((weeepsss like old hippie grandma)))))

This is the reason for marriage, people. Love made possible and given a chance, not impeded and made explicitly difficult at every turn. Souls brought together, not kept apart.

Love is patient, love is kind.
Love does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
Love is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Fluor Field at the West End, baseball stadium sign, home of Greenville (SC) Drive baseball team.


~*~


Does anyone know why YouTube sometimes says "embedding disabled by request"? Must be a pretty important person's request, I figure.

Also, why does it sometimes say "I'm sorry, this video no longer available" when you try to play certain previously-embedded videos? Obviously they don't care about the bloggers and the highfalutin social commentary we are providing to go with the videos, illuminating the far-out corners of Western Civ. Who is going to look up old 70s hit songs and explain the Freudian meanings, if not your humble bloggers? Harumph.

Anyway... the following video has gone through these permutations... I'd save it for a few days, then poof, it wouldn't play and would have vanished from the YouTube archives as well. It's been very hard to find the song, so I was thrilled to find it today. (I wish I'd had it at Halloween, so I could play it alongside HUMAN FLY.)

This is from waaaay back (1971) when songs were forced by radio censors to use oodles of euphemism. Virtually every line of this song has double, even triple meanings, and you just wonder how they got away with a line like "Evil grows in cracks and holes" without the record getting banned. No doubt, it's because of the presentation, which at first listen, sounds very bubblegum. Gotcha! Critic Kim Cooper writes: "The Partridge Family + The Manson Family = The Poppy Family"... even the name of the band wasn't what it seemed at first. They looked hippie-wholesome as the very dickens... yes, the same wholesome kids who took various strange acidhead detours in the late 60s/early 70s... wholesome, Canadian, fun-and-funky kids gone... well, if not exactly WRONG... then, you know, off. Yes, just off.

Some time later, the author of this song recorded one of the worst pop songs of all time, truly the fate of the damned. (Terry Jacks: Seasons in the Sun) But you know, we don't remember all of those bad Partridge Family songs they tortured us with, do we? No, we remember SEASONS IN THE SUN, it's badness is of a truly legendary nature. It's that touch of Manson that makes it morbid and weird.

And without further ado, WHERE EVIL GROWS - the Poppy Family