Culturebox: The Power and the Pathos

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doublex The Power and the Pathos A review of Real Housewives of D.C. By Dahlia Lithwick Posted Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2010, at 7:04 AM ET There's something intrinsically depressing about the very premise of Real Housewives of Washington D.C.--even beyond the standard depressing-ness of the entire Bravo franchise about table-toppling, hair-pulling female nutjobs. It's not that the D.C. women are not sufficiently glamorous or embarrassing to gape at. In fact, if the premiere episode says anything about the capital, it's that women can get drunk and blurt out ambiguously racist things in swanky celebrity restaurants as easily here as they do it in New York, New Jersey, Atlanta, or Orange County. But the striving in this version takes on a new, desperate edge we haven't yet seen. The real currency in Washington isn't money but "proximity to power," the first voiceover cautions us. And all the other Housewives, however crazy they may be, will at some level be at home with social status, great wealth, buckets of booze, and the possibility of being mistaken for their own 15-year-old daughters. But the D.C. Housewives crave something they will likely never even come near: power. And that makes the show painful, unless you are one of those people who actually enjoys watching Icarus get fried. To continue reading, click here. Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor. Follow her on Twitter. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate How Does Stoning Work in Iran? How Big Are the Stones? Who Throws First? A Dispatch From a Transgender Camp for Kids Hitchens: What I Learned About Hugo Chavez's Mental Health When I Visited Venezuela	Advertisement
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