Lucia

de Vernai

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May 27, 2009

Who Cares About Sotomayor? The Real Housewives is Going to D.C.!

In case Washington D.C. was not enough of a circus, Bravo has announced that The Real Housewives, its hit docu-series following aging boob jobs and catfights, is gearing up to develop the next segment of the show in the nation’s capital. Just what the world needs to know about women in Washington, right as President Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic woman to the Supreme Court.

Frances Berwick, executive vice president of Bravo Media, said that to reflect D.C., the network is looking to cast “influential players, cultural connoisseurs, fashion sophisticates and philanthropic leaders."    

Historically, that has translated into following bored, over-tanned women who drop insightful gems like, “I want to get breast implants, but my husband, he’s more of an ass guy'' or explain that she does not mind her husband opening a strip club as long as it’s ''a respectable strip club.''

Not that any of it would be a particular surprise – greed, power and dead hookers are as much a part of the D.C. culture as bad traffic and security clearances. Until now, however, the American people had the right to be outraged, thinking that this is the exception to the rule – that the people running the country aren’t all like that, those are the exceptions that prove our family values and patriotic devotion.

Real Housewives is bound to make a pretty penny making a spectacle of how wrong we were to think so. In a statement, Bravo said that it is looking for “those women who have their pulse on the most important cultural events, political galas, gallery openings and fundraisers in Washington society. These leading members of D.C. society are in the know and comfortable discussing everything from the economy to high fashion. They are the talk of the town in the most powerful city in the world."

In other words: Bored, rich and in need of the attention their policy-making, globe-trotting husbands are not giving them. The only D.C. housewife that is worth following around is promoting J.Crew, raising two young daughters and attending official engagements around the world. Sorry Bravo, but besides a questionable outfit or two, none of your kind of material at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Then again, the floodgates to finding publicity through deplorable behavior, often while taxpayers have been footing the bill, have already been opened.

Everyone’s favorite hockey mom got a makeover that became talk of the nation, almost drowning out her brilliant policy proposals. Now her daughter is posing on the cover of People Magazine sporting a graduation cap and gown with her out-of-wedlock baby.

When I was in high school, getting knocked up was not a good thing. But as more and more women Bravo calls "the people who rub elbows with the most prominent people in the country and easily move in the city's diverse political and social circles" find scandal to be the best way to get our attention, appreciating women like Sotomayor – as women, not merely litigators – is not likely.                                                                                            

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