Some of you may Michaele Salahi, and her husband Tareq, who were arrested after crashing an elite dinner that both the President and the First Lady attended.
The groan-inducing moment of the story for me came when I found out that the Salahi's were being filmed for Bravo's newest addition to its "Why Are These People on Television" line-up--"The Real Housewives of D.C."
At the time, it was said that Salahi was auditioning to be on the show. Bravo categorically denied any such thing, going so far as to muddy the waters regarding whether or not they were even associated with the Salahi.
Now, lo and behold, the show is premiering and not only are the party crashers on it, but Bravotv.com has actually issued a statement from Andy Cohen, the producer, IN DEFENSE of keeping Salahi on the show.
Cohen has ridden the Housewife train into his own Bravo talk show, as well as all the Housewives' Reunion Specials. Every time I see him on the air, I wonder if he actually was asked to take on all these jobs, or if he blackmailed Bravo by threatening to pull the plug on their biggest water cooler shows.
Either way, the man is absolutely repulsive. He's like Perez Hilton without the...um...you know what, he just IS Perez Hilton.
His statement regarding the Salahi's is so priceless I almost wish someone would perform it as a dramatic reading onstage somewhere.
In it, he claims that the "Real Housewives" franchise is all about showing people living their actual lives, even if that means rewarding, for lack of a better word, total creeps who wind up getting investigated by the FBI in order to help their chances at getting air time. He says that being on television isn't necessarily a reward, but I think we all know that in this day and age, it very much is--even if your reputation goes down the drain, your wallet usually swells enough to make up for it.
I also laughed to myself when I realized he was trying to compare what he does to what documentary filmmakers do. Is anyone in reality television still trying to pretend it's not scripted? These people may be living their lives, but they're certainly not doing it without suggestions from the producers. Why else would people who claim to hate each other go on weekend trips with each other when they know they're going to end up biting each other's heads off?
I'm sure Bravo would deny this, but then again, didn't one of the newest New York Housewives get cut out of the latest season because she wasn't mixing it up enough with the other women? It's been common knowledge since the early days of Jerry Springer that behaving badly gets you on television.
Now, I could understand if Cohen issued a statement saying something to the effect of--
"Look, we filmed the woman for three months then she got herself into trouble. It would be impossible to cut her out of the show, and we can't scrap an entire project just because of one person's bad judgment, but we'll try to depict what happened with as little sensationalism as possible, and Salahi will not be invited back to participate in future seasons."
Instead, Cohen made up a ridiculous argument that Salahi's poor decision somehow adds to her allure as a character. Yes, I said 'character.' He talks about these women as if they're fictional beings, and then one sentence later argues that his shows are untouched reality.
It's just another example of the new way to deal with scandal.
Not to try and untangle yourself from it, but to wrap yourself up in it like a blanket.
The scariest element of this story is that it continues to dilute a word that was already becoming too fuzzy:
Reality.
The groan-inducing moment of the story for me came when I found out that the Salahi's were being filmed for Bravo's newest addition to its "Why Are These People on Television" line-up--"The Real Housewives of D.C."
At the time, it was said that Salahi was auditioning to be on the show. Bravo categorically denied any such thing, going so far as to muddy the waters regarding whether or not they were even associated with the Salahi.
Now, lo and behold, the show is premiering and not only are the party crashers on it, but Bravotv.com has actually issued a statement from Andy Cohen, the producer, IN DEFENSE of keeping Salahi on the show.
Cohen has ridden the Housewife train into his own Bravo talk show, as well as all the Housewives' Reunion Specials. Every time I see him on the air, I wonder if he actually was asked to take on all these jobs, or if he blackmailed Bravo by threatening to pull the plug on their biggest water cooler shows.
Either way, the man is absolutely repulsive. He's like Perez Hilton without the...um...you know what, he just IS Perez Hilton.
His statement regarding the Salahi's is so priceless I almost wish someone would perform it as a dramatic reading onstage somewhere.
In it, he claims that the "Real Housewives" franchise is all about showing people living their actual lives, even if that means rewarding, for lack of a better word, total creeps who wind up getting investigated by the FBI in order to help their chances at getting air time. He says that being on television isn't necessarily a reward, but I think we all know that in this day and age, it very much is--even if your reputation goes down the drain, your wallet usually swells enough to make up for it.
I also laughed to myself when I realized he was trying to compare what he does to what documentary filmmakers do. Is anyone in reality television still trying to pretend it's not scripted? These people may be living their lives, but they're certainly not doing it without suggestions from the producers. Why else would people who claim to hate each other go on weekend trips with each other when they know they're going to end up biting each other's heads off?
I'm sure Bravo would deny this, but then again, didn't one of the newest New York Housewives get cut out of the latest season because she wasn't mixing it up enough with the other women? It's been common knowledge since the early days of Jerry Springer that behaving badly gets you on television.
Now, I could understand if Cohen issued a statement saying something to the effect of--
"Look, we filmed the woman for three months then she got herself into trouble. It would be impossible to cut her out of the show, and we can't scrap an entire project just because of one person's bad judgment, but we'll try to depict what happened with as little sensationalism as possible, and Salahi will not be invited back to participate in future seasons."
Instead, Cohen made up a ridiculous argument that Salahi's poor decision somehow adds to her allure as a character. Yes, I said 'character.' He talks about these women as if they're fictional beings, and then one sentence later argues that his shows are untouched reality.
It's just another example of the new way to deal with scandal.
Not to try and untangle yourself from it, but to wrap yourself up in it like a blanket.
The scariest element of this story is that it continues to dilute a word that was already becoming too fuzzy:
Reality.
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