Real Housewives of D.C. Can't Beat C-SPAN
Bravo announced this week that it is expanding its Real Housewives franchise to the nation's capital, with its "influential players, cultural connoisseurs, fashion sophisticates and philanthropic leaders."
Have they been here lately? The best-dressed aide on Capitol Hill would horrify the lowest grip at Universal Studios. There are no cultural connoisseurs. Congressional leaders can be dragged to the Kennedy Center once a year for a televised gala, and they leave early.
For women, fashion is low heels and the Hillary Clinton pantsuit; for men, any tie that doesn't have a soup stain. As for philanthropy, there is no Bill Gates or Ford Foundation. The Rockefeller we have is in the Senate, lives quietly and leaves handing out the family fortune to relatives.
But we do have influential players, and the most influential of all sells everything from magazines to bobblehead dolls. Barack Obama has made Washington interesting again -- young, smart, out and about. He has a beautiful wife, who he appears to be in love with, and two photogenic daughters, who appear amazingly well-behaved.
But that doesn't translate into fodder for Bravo.
Let's face it: Michelle Obama isn't one of the 25 housewives on Bravo's short list. And none of the mini-Michelles in the White House -- like Sarah Feinberg, the blond and beautiful aide to Rahm Emanuel -- would think of taking a call from a reality TV producer. A potential assistant deputy undersecretary of something someday, she's not taking any risks. To be wild and crazy in the West Wing is to tape a segment for PBS's News Hour.
As for ratings, must-watch TV in D.C. is Timothy Geithner testifying before the House Banking Committee and making the market arrow in the corner of the screen go up -- or down -- 100 points. See the cameras click as Nancy Pelosi in her sensible suit accuses a CIA briefer of lying. Tune in as Dick Cheney expels former Secretary of State Colin Powell, one of the most admired people in America, from the Republican party on Face the Nation, Washington's version of American Idol.
What's won the Real Housewives high ratings is in short supply here: obvious wealth, shopping as sport, conspicuous beauty and indulgent husbands. It's not North Korea's nuclear bomb and TARP. Squabbles over Sarbanes-Oxley rock our world.
In the real Washington, housewives don't have the discretionary income to be interesting. They are widowed by husbands working on -- or living off of -- Capitol Hill or the White House, virtually raising the children alone. They try to snatch a few minutes listening to National Public Radio while driving the carpool in a futile effort not to be ignored at the rare cocktail party where someone might deign to talk to them. If they have money, they can't hire help because their husbands don't want a nanny problem should they be face vetting as a nominee to run Treasury.
Which brings us to another deficit Real Housewives needs to consider: Job lust is the only kind of lust here. We're too busy for sex, burning the midnight oil reading up on new rules to curb credit default swaps or watching Jon Stewart to see if a colleague is being lampooned.
And the morning. Forget it. We're speed-clicking the remote dropping in on Morning Joe and Today while reading three papers to make sure we can say yes when asked if we saw that piece on land-use planning while at the gym, where we're working off the slabs of rare roast beef served at not-to-be-missed fundraisers.
The only sign of sex is the kind over which politicians lose their jobs. Which brings us to the city's escort business which as the Emperor's VIP Club patronized by Client #9 shows is thriving. It's so vibrant you would think Congress was subsidizing it, like soybeans.
To duplicate the drama of the other real wives, Bravo would have to go outside the Beltway where McMansions, day spas, manipulated husbands, spoiled children, frozen smiles and country clubs abound.
As a final cautionary note, let me refer Bravo executives to the experience of the most famous Washington housewife, often called the most beautiful movie star in the world, Elizabeth Taylor. In 1976 she made John Warner, a former Navy secretary who would go on to the U.S. Senate, her sixth husband.
Even she couldn't cut through the singular focus of politicians on the make. At parties, she would stand alone as guests proved power is the ultimate aphrodisiac by making a beeline for Henry Kissinger. She knew she was in the wrong town when a photographer aiming his camera at a four-star admiral talking with Warner asked Taylor to step out of the picture.
The two divorced in 1982, but not before Taylor complained that she gained 50 pounds watching old movies and eating hot fudge sundaes alone, waiting for Warner to get home.
I wish Bravo the best of luck. And I'll be sure to tune in, as long as it doesn't conflict with C-SPAN's Journalist Roundtable.
Originally published on Bloomberg News.
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"Well, there go the state's secrets"..
KIDDING!
(no I'm not)
NO, REALLY!
GEE..i can hardly wait to miss this show...yet another reason to NOT watch BRAVO.
The show will most likely consist of Northern Virginia Princesses from Loudoun and Farifax County. I'd guess that the women will be married to D.C. influence peddlers (lobbyists and lawyers). If they wanted to make it interesting they'd find a wife of a foreign ambassador.
**Sorry Margaret. Women in those other featured cities are hardly representative of their areas either. If it's going to be on the boob tube, they'll find volunteers ready to fake it for the fame. No place is immune.
Interesting article, Ms. Carlson. I don't understand Bravo anyway. Not more "Housewives" programs. They are awful. The women are boring, tedious, all they do is shop and gossip. A bunch of teenagers that never grew up. I never watch Bravo anymore.
And backstabbing each other...
WOAH!
The only way this will fly, is if the "housewives" are all the gay men in this city. They did just basically get their marriages recognized.
That is Bravo audience after all, right?
I'm waiting for something with a little unpredictability to it... Real Housewives of Haiti?
absolutely! where do the ladies who lunch go in mombassa ???!!!!
D.C. offspring here..
Don't forget...
solo gardening on the weekends while the husband dips in and out of sleep during PGA coverage.
Wonky conversation over dinner at a restaurant opening. What restaurant? Who knows, that place near where Brookings used to hold its... why did we go there during opening? What a nightmare, at least we got out by 8pm. If I had known... all that hassle over food.
Unexpected low turn-out family meals -- Where IS your Dad? Oh right, forgot he's at that conference in in Seattle tonight, San Francisco tomorrow.
And of course... neighbor drama. Who are they again? We've lived here ten years and I can't remember their last names.. his wife is thai, he's retired but contracts with the military. Anyway... their chrysantimums sure look nice. We might have to put a net over the pond to keep out their cat.
----
The show's formula just doesn't work for D.C. The morally bankrupt housewives they're looking for ply their trade away from watchful eyes. I presume, they're looking for the embittered divorcees, sticking around the cocktail circuit trying to turn knives for the purpose of advancement, not pleasure.. and broadcasting that doesn't serve their ends.
I'm with you on this. I don't think Bravo is going to get the sort of people they dream of, unless it's the fameseekers. Most DC movers and shakers don't want that kind of scrutiny and everyone else is just too plain busy in the civil service. Power is what matters here, not so much the fashion and the toys, as far as I've been able to tell, although houses and gardens do obsess people here.
Housewife. I wouldn't want to be one of those people, sounds nasty
Great article. I'm a wife (though certainly not a housewife!) in DC. When I saw Bravo was doing this, I couldn't wrap my head around what kind of women they could get. Women in DC are ambitious, career driven, and cause-focused. The wealthy women of DC are highly educated and involved, they are not self-absorbed fasionistas like the NYC and OC ones. I agree with a previous post, more misogynist fodder in something like Dallas and Houston.
chem is hse says:
(though certainly not a housewife!)
tsk tsk grasshoppe
You just put down 99.9% of the women who came before you. We not only had to scrub and fight for rights at the same time, who do you think fought so you could do and be more? Women had to fight for the vote and then scrub, had to fight so a woman could wear pants and then go home and scrub. Housewives god love em.
Comparing Houswives to C-span is like comparing comic books to law journals.
Sounds boring. I'm from Houston, and I think that a Real Housewives from either Houston or Dallas would be more interesting and entertaining.
As I type this, I am watching on C-SPAN something taped in a gracious Washington home. It's a apparently a party honoring Michael Smerconish's new book (I see caterers and books). He's chatting up the guests with perfectly inane cocktail party chatter then turns around and runs into Ted Stevens. The guest of honor doesn't miss a beat and says he's honored to meet the former senator who looks for all the world like he doesn't even know where he is. His wife is patiently trying to explain to Sen. Ancient and Clueless who Smerconish is and is repeating to him things Smerconish just said to her. Oh, wow, unless the hostess starts disrobing immediately, this is NEVER going to play on Bravo. They'd be better off with a show called The Gay Blades of Capitol Hill. THAT might be entertaining.
They will be okay as long as they stick with a cast of girlfriends or divorcees (as they often have in the other installmants); with employment that is peripheral to politics. For instance, a Realtor, an interior Designer, a Fake Socialite wannabe who goes to lots of Embassy parties, an up and coming PR pro, a Stewardess, and because it is Bravo, maybe a Madam, er- I mean someone who operates a discreet Escort service!
The other "Real Housewives" (who, by and large, are neither "housewives" nor "real") are nothing like the women I met when we lived in NY and NJ." Watching that show is like watching science fiction except for the part that makes one glad that one's friends are nothing like these women. That is where the guilty pleasure comes from in watching these shows.
I love the way Margaret Carlson writes; it's the same as when she speaks. She's smart and funny and insightful.
Great article.
I second that !
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