The Unreal D.C.
As some readers of The Scrapbook may be aware, The Real Housewives of Washington, D.C., debuted last week on the Bravo channel. And as might be expected, the real housewives of Washington, D.C.—like their sisters in Atlanta, Orange County, and New Jersey—have been loudly complaining that this highly successful program is transparently bogus and that the “housewives” in question are interchangeable with the “housewives” of, say, Orange County.
The Scrapbook cannot disagree. The Washington cast is an assorted lot (the founder of a modeling agency, Arthur Godfrey’s granddaughter, a philanthropic MBA, a British transplant of dubious immigrant status, Michaele Salahi the White House gatecrasher), heavy on blondes and discreet cosmetic surgery, whose lives and vocations seem distinctly uncharacteristic of Washington. There’s not a federal employee in the bunch, no lawyer, no congressman’s wife, no lobbyist or policy wonk, no discernible Republican or Democrat. You get the impression that if you mentioned the Carnegie Endowment to these “housewives” they would think it concerns breast enhancement.
But as foolish as The Real Housewives may be, The Scrapbook predicts that it is destined to become yet another guilty pleasure in the nation’s capital. Washington, the home of Wilbur Mills, Monica Lewinsky, and Barney Frank, enjoys a good show. Nor, in fairness, is The Real Housewives all that different from Hollywood’s perception of Washington over the decades: characteristic of its times and seldom having anything to do with reality.
In the 1930s, for example, there was The President Vanishes (1934) about a successful fascist plot to kidnap the commander in chief by a would-be Führer named Lincoln Lee (“I talk big. I am big!”). Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) is much admired for its paean to democracy and Jimmy Stewart’s performance, but the idea of one incorruptible senator ending decades of cynical misrule on Capitol Hill is as laughable now as it was 70 years ago.
The Cold War and the advent of atomic weaponry brought us the comic utopian masterpiece The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), with its flying saucer on the Mall and unforgettable slogan (“Klaatu barada nikto”), as well as Advise and Consent (1962) about Red-baiting and the suicide of a closeted gay senator. Crazed right-wing generals were on the minds of the Hollywood artistes who created Seven Days in May (1964), where General Burt Lancaster plots to overthrow disarmament-minded president Fredric March, and Dr. Strangelove (1964), which managed to combine several left-wing shibboleths—Air Force generals, nuclear theorists, anticommunism, the Strategic Air Command, German scientists—into one rollicking spectacle.
In recent years Hollywood has tried—with mixed success—to glamorize Washington journalism ( All the President’s Men, 1976), demonize the CIA ( Three Days of the Condor, 1975), make environmentalism sexy ( The American President, 1995), and politicians lovable ( Dave, 1993). Television programs set in Washington tend to be sitcoms ( The Farmer’s Daughter, 227, Hearts Afire, Women of the House), office dramas ( West Wing), or romantic fluff ( Scarecrow and Mrs. King) which could take place just about anywhere. The truth is that Washington is a company town, a political capital, and the currency of politics is ideas and jibber-jabber—not exactly the ingredients of gripping drama or side-splitting comedy.
So The Scrapbook welcomes the “Real Housewives” to Washington, and looks forward to Michaele Salahi crashing the next meeting of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. ♦
Joe Klein Then and Now
T ime magazine blogger Joe Klein, on August 2, 2010, commenting on Obama’s speech on the war in Iraq:
It is the way of the world that Barack Obama’s announcement today of the end of the combat phase in Iraq, and the beginning of a 16-month period of advice and support for the Iraqi security forces before U.S. troops leave in 2011, will not be remembered as vividly as George Bush’s juvenile march across the deck of an aircraft carrier, costumed as a combat aviator in a golden sunset, to announce—six years and tens of thousands of lives prematurely—the “end of combat operations.”
Time magazine’s Joe Klein, in an appearance on Face the Nation on
May 4, 2003, commenting on Bush’s appearance two days earlier on the USS Lincoln:
Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me. And it just shows you how high a mountain these Democrats are going to have to climb. You compare that image, which everybody across the world saw, with this debate last night where you have nine people on a stage and it doesn’t air until 11:30 at night, up against Saturday Night Live, and you see what a major, major struggle the Democrats are going to have to try and beat a popular incumbent president.
As Peter Wehner noted at the Commentary magazine blog Contentions, “Such bipolar shifts of opinion in a high-ranking public official would be alarming and dangerous; in a columnist and blogger, they are comical and discrediting.” ♦
Your Tax Dollars at Work in Obama’s HHS
Is your child bedwetting? Pre-teen becoming physically aggressive? Teenager doing heroin? It’s probably not his small bladder, or your parenting, or the bad elements at his prep school. It’s the oil spill.
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the same people tasked with taking over and running the new, improved U.S. health care system, children may be “frightened, confused and insecure” if they “experienced personal consequences of the oil spill through their family or community.” Okay, maybe. But according to the report from the Center for Mental Health Services, teenagers and young adults might exhibit troubled behavior even if they just “watched it on television, or overheard it being discussed by adults.”
Different age groups will have different reactions. “Very young children may return to an earlier behavioral stage to cope with the stress and loss associated with the oil spill disaster. Preschoolers may resume thumbsucking or bedwetting, or they may suddenly become afraid of strangers, animals, darkness, or ‘monsters.’ ” Older kids, ages 12-18, might have “vague physical complaints.” They “may abandon chores, school work, or other responsibilities that they previously handled. Although some may compete vigorously for attention from parents and teachers, they may also withdraw, resist authority, become disruptive or aggressive at home or in the classroom.” Some parents call this adolescence.
What to do? In addition to telling children that “you, too, may have reactions associated with the oil spill disaster,” parents and teachers should encourage kids to heal through “conversation, writing or artwork.”
If all of that sounds like something from a bad Ph.D. dissertation, the final “how to help section” reads like something that might have been dictated by the children and teenagers themselves.
Teachers and parents should “temporarily reduce your expectations about performance in school or at home, perhaps by substituting less demanding responsibilities for normal assignments or chores.”
What’s that, Johnny? You overheard the oil spill being discussed by adults? That’s awful. Shoot for all C’s this semester and don’t worry about cleaning your room. No word from HHS on how to deal with the severe trauma caused by overhearing too much of MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann. ♦
Sentences We Didn’t Finish
"A couple weeks ago, President Obama and his wife held ‘A Broadway Celebration: In Performance at the White House,’ a concert in the East Room by some of Broadway’s biggest names, singing some of Broadway’s most famous hits. Because my wife is on the board of the public TV station that organized the evening, . . . " ( New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman, -August 3). ♦