By Linh Dinh

Dinh

It’s all going according to plan, this transformation of the US into a police state and Third-World nation, but what’s meant by “Third World,” exactly? A Third World country is one that is poor, with inadequate infrastructure, an obscene wealth gap and a corrupt government. America is by far the most-indebted nation on earth, with a record-setting trade deficit, so we are, in effect, much poorer than Greece, Zimbabwe, Somalia or any other basket case, but it hasn’t become manifest because we have guns, missiles and drones pointing in all directions. Using our gargantuan military to hold the world hostage, we receive more foreign aids, in the form of debts, than all the other nations combined. Riding a nuclear-armed mobility scooter, America is a gross welfare queen barging down the world’s sidewalk, but this is how an empire is supposed to work, many will smirk, and they are right, of course, until this extortion racket falls apart, and soon enough. Preparing for the inevitable, our ruling class is becoming more belligerent abroad, in a last ditch effort to prolong its advantages, and nastier at home, to slap down domestic rage at a sinking standard of living. Splurging beyond our means for decades, we will revert to the universal means, and not because we care about justice or equality, but because we don’t have a choice.

Just as there are pockets of First World opulence and luxury in even the most dismal Third World countries, rich nations also have stretches of Third World squalidness and destitution, but Third World isn’t all bad. Not by far. To survive on little requires enterprise, resourcefulness and cooperation, virtues that will emerge and even blossom as we slide downward. Ubiquitous in most Third World countries, peddlers will make a comeback here, and the black market will thrive. As globalism recedes, the local will rise. Instead of being slaves to huge corporations, we will become tiny businessmen, as long as we’re not hunted down, then fined or locked up. Of course, as work become scarcer and scarcer and manual labor even cheaper than now, many of us will become slaves to our neighbors, as house servants. You will learn to cook, clean, wash, sweep, mop, iron and massage from sunup to lights out, every day. Dressed like Lady Gaga, many mothers and daughters will loiter at street corners.

Back to the positive aspect. Each home can become a store or a restaurant. Each car is a gypsy cab. In totalitarian Vietnam, the government actually gives its people much more leeway to conduct petty business than is allowed in America. A private home can display a table with, say, five cans of soda, two brands of cigarettes and some candies, and that’s a store, though nobody is manning it most of the time. To get service, you might have to shout. It’s not their only source of income, but this pee wee initiative does bring in a buck or two a day, so it’s better than nothing. The adjacent home might sell bags of rice. A third is a two-table café serving coffee, soda and beer, and if you want to eat something, the proprietor will run down the street to get it for you, for a modest surcharge. If you have just one van, you can pick up people at a predetermined spot, where many other vans, unaffiliated to you, also go. Driving passengers to another city, you can also snare business along the way. At just about any street corner, men wait on motorcycles for clients. You negotiate a price for where you want to go, then hop on the back. Just a handful of rides a day will earn each man enough to feed his family. It won’t be steak, but he is self-reliant and his own boss. There is no welfare, food stamps or Social Security in a Third World country, no safety net outside of your extended family.

My Philadelphia neighborhood, the Italian Market, has long boasted or flaunted Third World aspects. In its heydays thirty or forty years ago, it resembled Naples, one of the most Third World-like cities in all of Europe, and now it evokes charming Chihuahua. Here, Italian, Mexican, Chinese and Vietnamese-Americans coexist, and within a five-minute walk from my door, you can get a live chicken, duck or even rabbit, goat meat, ox tails, an Italian tripe sandwich, a beef tongue taco or a Vietnamese rice porridge with pork innards. I’ve had better pho here than in Hanoi, its birthplace, and I’m not kidding. Third World business arrangements are also common. To get Mexican clients, a Chinese-owned barber shop has a Mexican barber, with the split 6-4, in the house’s favor, though the Spanish-speaking haircutter keeps her own tips. Half a mile from me, there’s a restaurant that’s half Mexican, half Vietnamese. Splitting the overhead, two families share a kitchen and operate under one roof.

Left alone, we will figure out a way to scrape by, but it remains to be seen to what degree, and for how long, the government will try to prevent us from surviving on our own. One can say that the United States is becoming a police state because it is turning into a Third World country. Already, choppers snake through skyscraper canyons and tanks roll down main streets. The police state protects and advances the interests of the ruling class, which in our case is the military banking complex, and since an informal market nibbles at the profits of banks and corporations, you can expect their henchmen, cops and regulators, to stomp hard on us smallest fries. (Underpaid in a collapsed economy, cops will also use these opportunities to shake us down, so that’s a kind of tax we’ll have to pay.) In any case, it appears that as we become poorer and thinner, not to mention more enterprising or devious, and more colorful too, since everyday will be casual Friday, we will have to fend off our bullying state, if not the gangs that rise up in its place.

Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a novel, Love Like Hate. He’s tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog, State of the Union.

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Photo by By Upplandsmuseet  From Flickr Creative Commons

Sweden: When a Progressive icon becomes the darling
of the Right
by Ritt Goldstein
Copyright June 2012

FALUN, Sweden – When most people think of Sweden, it’s of a country that once virtually defined the meanings of both integrity and social justice, a place that for many was once more an ideal than a nation. But unrealized by most, that place we knew was slowly dying, victim of the same neoliberal toxins that have poisoned so much, with another Sweden, a ‘Brave New Sweden’, rising in its place.

Today’s Sweden is one that’s troubled, one whose official ‘Tweets’ are even disturbing, with the leader of Sweden’s Jewish communities just asking for the removal of the current ‘Tweeter’ because of troubling comments upon Jews. But it seems such conduct is simply a part of the ‘Brave New’ state now emerging, a state whose changes have led it to be increasingly defined as the new icon of the Right.

The conservative Kansas City Star headlined in May, “Time to take a cue from Sweden, of all places”; Bloomberg News just ran “Booming Sweden’s Free-Market Solution”; and, as early as September, the unabashedly right-wing American Spectator published its own love letter, “Free Market Sweden, Social Democratic America”. Make no mistake, the Sweden we once knew is gone, harsh neoliberal transformation leaving cold the beauty that had been. Ever more increasingly, the effects of this transformation make themselves evident.

Far-right and xenophobia surge

In 2010 a far-right party with neo-Nazi roots, the Sweden Democrats (SD) was elected to Sweden’s parliament. Since April, polls reveal their support jumped 85% — 40% in April/May, 35% in May/June — the May/June poll numbers highlighting that the increase from the level of support they had in March totaled 85%. Notably, famed Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson was known to fear such changes would occur, and an article I earlier penned for Intrepid Report indeed addressed Sweden’s turn to its ‘dark side’ – “‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ . . . the reality of Sweden’s dark side”. And, the evident changes are far more than political.

Just days ago, Sweden’s Twitter account — Sweden’s official Twitter where a different citizen takes over the account every week — began ‘Tweeting’ what the New York Times termed “odd questions about Jews”, and even the Wall Street Journal reported troubling comments upon both Jews and Gays. The culprit, a 27 year old single mother of two, genuinely failed to perceive the implications of what she was saying, and that’s a real problem here.

To quote from a just published EBook of mine, ‘Living as a Sub-Human in Sweden’ (without charge at http://www.coldtype.net/Assets.12/PDFs/0609.RittBook.pdf )…

During a conversation with a young man here that seemed quite intelligent, decent, he began expressing his admiration for Hitler’s SS, trying to explain it for me. Perhaps helping to explain such logic, a recent poll found that over 25% of Swedes between 18 and 29 admired the idea of a dictatorship, and I was more than surprised when a well known figure that was considerably older recently argued dictatorship’s benefits as well. Among those that are older, a fellow I know recently tried to explain how a book he read revealed ‘Jewish control’ of the 1930s financial system, actually believing such antisemitic idiocy. But, the most disturbing aspect of these incidents – each occurring quite separately from the others – was the complete lack of malice among those embracing such absurdities. These ‘otherwise good people’ completely failed to recognize the wholly inappropriate nature of what they were saying.

For many Swedes, prejudice and the injustices that come of it have simply become a way of life – there appears to be no feeling of guilt or shame. A video of a recent scandal involving Sweden’s Minister of Culture emphasizes the point, the disturbing YouTube piece titled: “Swedish Racism: The Venus Hottentot Cake Vs. Swedish Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth”.

Further accentuating the current milieu, a global conference of far-right groups, the so-called ‘Worldwide Counter-Jihad Alliance’, has scheduled its kick-off rally in Stockholm on 4 August.

The toxic effects of Sweden’s ‘reforms’

In all fairness to Sweden, there do yet remain some Swedes where one cannot find any people better, but economic reforms of the last years have hit many in this nation hard…very, very hard. According to Eurostat, Sweden currently has more people at risk of poverty than any nation except Bulgaria, and separately the OECD found the gap between the rich and poor is expanding at four times the pace of the US.

The reality in Sweden today is a simple and scary one, with inheritance taxes and other taxes for the elite either abolished or vastly diminished, publicly owned industry and services increasingly privatized (including eldercare, healthcare, and education), and the once great network of social services a shadow of its former self, and yet diminishing. Homelessness has risen 25% since 2005, and assorted social service scandals regularly make news, ie, ambulances that are called for but don’t come. For obvious reasons, many everyday Swedes are angry, but for equally obvious reasons the political leaders responsible for these changes avoid accepting blame.

As for the nation’s elite, they are enjoying a wealth increase unparalleled in this nation’s recent history.

With the far-right surging on scapegoating Sweden’s immigrants and promising a return to the social-welfare state — plus the exclusion of those of foreign origins — societal focus has been effectively shifted from the ‘economic reforms’ that caused societal pain, the political leaders that are actually to blame for it. As the massive and ongoing redistribution of Sweden’s societal assets continues, it is small wonder the US Right admires it so much, nor that the poison fruit of this phenomenon resembles the kind of politics, xenophobia and hate that once dominated the 1930s.

According to Swedish Radio (SR), Julian Assange’s Swedish attorney, Per E. Samuelsson, just some days ago told SR that “Sweden is not a state of laws one can depend on” (my own translation from: “Sverige ingen rättsstat att lita på.”). Significantly, given that I personally endure housing documented as badly contaminated, housing which has increasingly and devastatingly sickened me, and do so because of the sanction of Swedish authorities and courts — despite laws which arguably seem that they should indeed offer protection — I tend to agree with Mr. Assange’s attorney. Of course, I too am both of foreign origins and a journalist, plus being a minority, Jewish.

Fortunately, one can also sometimes still encounter the virtues that made Sweden great. And on Monday 18 June, a prosecutor that I had been sending material upon the ongoing housing circumstances wrote, “it is my opinion that at this stage there is reason to believe that a miljöbrott (environmental crime) has been committed”. On Monday an investigation headed by this prosecutor was officially opened. 

As to what’s ahead, the title of my EBook already speaks to the reality I’ve discovered, both personally and for those others that are part of a minority or of foreign origins here, those ‘Living as a Sub-Human in Sweden’. Clearly, I really don’t think Sweden’s current circumstances are something America needs to emulate, but rather that Swedes badly need to address. But on the brighter side, it does seem there may be hope that addressing some nightmares has finally made it to the agenda.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ritt Goldstein is a courageous American investigative political journalist living in Sweden. His work has appeared fairly widely, including in America’s Christian Science Monitor, Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald, Spain’s El Mundo, Sweden’s Aftonbladet, Austria’s Wiener Zeitung, Hong Kong’s Asia Times, and a number of other global media outlets. He has lived in Sweden since July 1997, officially acquiring permanent residency there in 2006.  At present he is about to begin work on a book, one titled “Brave New Sweden”.

Follow me on Twitter @RittGoldstein

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By George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling, AlterNet

John Stuart Mill, along with earlier political economists such Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Malthus, and Marx, regarded the creation and manipulation of a nation’s economy not only as a technical question but one fraught with moral dilemmas.

 Authors of THE LITTLE BLUE BOOK: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic, where morally-based framing is discussed in great detail.

In his June 11, 2012 op-ed in the NY Times, Paul Krugman goes beyond economic analysis to bring up the morality and the conceptual framing that determines economic policy. He speaks of “the people the economy is supposed to serve” — “the unemployed,” and “workers”— and “the mentality that sees economic pain as somehow redeeming.”

Krugman is right to bring these matters up. Markets are not provided by nature. They are constructed — by laws, rules, and institutions. All of these have moral bases of one sort or another. Hence, all markets are moral, according to someone’s sense of morality. The only question is, Whose morality? In contemporary America, it is conservative versus progressive morality that governs forms of economic policy. The systems of morality behind economic policies need to be discussed.

Most Democrats, consciously or mostly unconsciously, use a moral view deriving from an idealized notion of nurturant parenting, a morality based on caring about their fellow citizens, and acting responsibly both for themselves and others with what President Obama has called “an ethic of excellence” — doing one’s best not just for oneself, but for one’s family, community, and country, and for the world. Government on this view has two moral missions: to protect and empower everyone equally.

The means is The Public, which provides infrastructure, public education, and regulations to maximize health, protection and justice, a sustainable environment, systems for information and transportation, and so forth. The Public is necessary for The Private, especially private enterprise, which relies on all of the above. The liberal market economy maximizes overall freedom by serving public needs: providing needed products at reasonable prices for reasonable profits, paying workers fairly and treating them well, and serving the communities to which they belong. In short, “the people the economy is supposed to serve” are ordinary citizens. This has been the basis of American democracy from the beginning.

Conservatives hold a different moral perspective, based on an idealized notion of a strict father family. In this model, the father is The Decider, who is in charge, knows right from wrong, and teaches children morality by punishing them painfully when they do wrong, so that they can become disciplined enough to do right and thrive in the market.  If they are not well-off, they are not sufficiently disciplined and so cannot be moral: they deserve their poverty. Applied to conservative politics, this yields a moral hierarchy with the wealthy, morally disciplined citizens deservedly on the top.

Democracy is seen as providing liberty, the freedom to seek one’s self interest with minimal responsibility for the interests or well-being of others. It is laissez-faire liberty. Responsibility is personal, not social. People should be able to be their own strict fathers, Deciders on their own — the ideal of conservative populists, who are voting their morality not their economic interests.  Those who are needy are assumed to be weak and undisciplined and therefore morally lacking. The most moral people are the rich. The slogan, “Let the market decide,” sees the market itself as The Decider, the ultimate authority, where there should be no government power over it to regulate, tax, protect workers, and to impose fines in tort cases. Those with no money are undisciplined, not moral, and so should be punished. The poor can earn redemption only by suffering and thus, supposedly, getting an incentive to do better.

If you believe all of this, and if you see the world only from this perspective, then you cannot possibly perceive the deep economic truth that The Public is necessary for The Private, for a decent private life and private enterprise. The denial of this truth, and the desire to eliminate The Public altogether, can unfortunately come naturally and honestly via this moral perspective.

When Krugman speaks of those who have “the mentality that sees economic pain as somehow redeeming,” he is speaking of those who have ordinary conservative morality, the more than forty percent who voted for John McCain and who now support Mitt Romney — and Angela Merkel’s call for “austerity” in Germany. It is conservative moral thought that gives the word “austerity” a positive moral connotation.

Just as the authority of a strict father must always be maintained, so the highest value in this conservative moral system is the preservation, extension, and ultimate victory of the conservative moral system itself.  Preaching about the deficit is only a means to an end — eliminating funding for The Public and bringing us closer to permanent conservative domination.  From this perspective, the Paul Ryan budget makes sense — cut funding for The Public (the antithesis of conservative morality) and reward the rich (who are the best people from a conservative moral perspective).  Economic truth is irrelevant here.

Historically, American democracy is premised on the moral principle that citizens care about each other and that a robust Public is the way to act on that care.  Who is the market economy for? All of us. Equally. But with the sway of conservative morality, we are moving toward a 1 percent economy — for the bankers, the wealthy investors, and the super rich like the six members of the family that owns Walmart and has accumulated more wealth than the bottom 30 percent of Americans. Six people!

What is wrong with a 1 percent economy? As Joseph Stiglitz has pointed out in The Price of Inequality, the 1 percent economy eliminates opportunity for over a hundred million Americans. From the Land of Opportunity, we are in danger of becoming the Land of Opportunism.

If there is hope in our present situation, it lies with people who are morally complex, who are progressive on some issues and conservative on others — often called “moderates,” “independents,” and “swing voters.” They have both moral systems in their brains: when one is turned on, the other is turned off.  The one that is turned on more often gets strongest. Quoting conservative language, even to argue against it, just strengthens conservatism in the brain of people who are morally complex. It is vital that they hear the progressive values of the traditional American moral system, the truth that The Public is necessary for The Private, the truth that our freedom depends on a robust Public, and that the economy is for all of us.

We must talk about those truths — over and over, every day. To help, we have written  The Little Blue Book. It can be ordered from barnesandnoble, amazon, and itunes, and after June 26 at your local bookstore.

George Lakoff is the author of Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate‘ (Chelsea Green). He is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and a Senior Fellow of the Rockridge Institute.

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Real Housewives, real housewives, and feminism as consumption
Originally posted May 5, 2011 by Stendhal

The RHOC crew a few seasons ago. Gunvalson, Rossi and Barney still at it.

Editor’s Note” Some very insightful commentary here by Stendhal, on TAKE ONE, even though we take exception to his concluding complaint (which we found almost shockingly flat and bourgie for such an accomplished scrivener):

Uh?  Worried about “entrepreneurship gaps”?  Lack of female leadership at Fortune 500s? Who are you Stendhal, some hedge fund yuppie with a dilettantish knack for gifted social criticism?  I’m puzzled. Has Stendhal ever gone beyond bourgie gender goals? Don’t the careers of Nancy Pelosi, Madeline Albright, Hillary Clinton, and Condi Rice—among others— learned our author nothing?  Well, anyhow, here’s the piece. Enjoy and gain from the good parts. In TAKE TWO,  Kerensa Cadenas, of MS magazine, weighs in with some good observations. She finds a spoof by SNL hilarous but we think it falls way short of its potential. In any case, you be the judge. Ironically, while nitwits occur in all social classes and political denominations, and capitalist television will go on doing what it has always done until disabled, I think the flamboyant existence of such women as we see on the Real Housewives franchise is a testament to the failure of bourgeois feminism in our time. —PG

TAKE ONE

By Stendhal
Thank you, Stendhal
I hate the Real Housewives shows. Hate them. Every time my girlfriend watches them, I am filled with inexplicable rage. I don’t wish the Housewives any harm (I’m a pacifist, of course), but I wish they would just disappear to some nice tropical island resort, without any cameras, so I never have to see or hear from them ever again.

All this led me to wonder, though, what the appeal of the Real Housewives is. The shows are wildly successful, and their spinoffs get viewers, too. Anecdotally, my girlfriend watches these shows all the time. There’s something to the idea of a primal drama — it’s fun to watch people who hate each other. Yet, the blend of diva behavior, extravagant wealth, and self-aware snark has somehow yielded a phenomenon greater than the sum of its parts. Is this where feminism has gone?

Part of the show’s appeal is aspirational: women would like to be the Real Housewives. The Real Housewives are neither Real (unless we mean “The Real World”) nor Housewives (many are unmarried or have variously attached beaus). The Real Housewives don’t appear to have jobs, even though many of them do. The shows rarely focus on their careers — heaven forbid! — and instead focus on their constant intrigues.

WARNING: VIDEO PARODY BELOW—or when parody comes awfully close to…reality. By the SNL gals…not too funny in my viewm but then, again, SNL has been unfunny for a very long time, and can’t seem to muster laughs even at an obvious target like the pathetic Real Housewives…—PG

The intrigues fuel the other part of the show’s appeal: voyeurism. The Real Housewives mostly drink too much too early in the day, and spend most of their time (onscreen) shopping, eating at fancy restaurants, or having parties. Who wouldn’t want this lifestyle? The shows model consumption — how to consume, where to consume, what to consume. The Real Housewives shows have broken away from a model where women must have their lives dictated by the men that surround them; instead the Real Housewives dictate their lives on their own terms. Certainly, the Real Housewives do not suffer from the “Bechdel Test” problem of women only discussing men; the Housewives only discuss each other (and themselves).

Yet, this self-assuredness manifests itself as outrageous diva behavior. Instead of being mediated through a husband, the Housewives have only one concern — their own egos. Their egomaniacal behavior is merely one manifestation of a general trend. Women routinely undermine each other in the workplace (warning, long law review article in PDF), and the “liberated” woman’s solidarity with other women has splintered. The empowerment movement has not led to liberation from false posturing for men; instead, it has led to yet another posture — one of vindictiveness and neediness — performed for other women.

In a recent critical analysis of Thelma and Louise and Pretty Woman, Carina Chocano explains in detail how Thelma and Louise, which appeared so revolutionary at the time of its release compared to Pretty Woman, was actually quite dated. Thelma and Louise reflects dangerous rebellious women, breaking free from male society and choosing suicide over subjugation. Pretty Woman, conversely, was all about subjugation to men, and more importantly, subjugation to money. It was a preview of feminism to come:

Ultimately, “Pretty Woman” wasn’t a love story; it was a money story. Its logic depended on a disconnect between character and narrative, between image and meaning, between money and value, and that made it not cluelessly traditional but thoroughly postmodern. Revisiting “Thelma and Louise” recently, I was struck by how dated it seemed, how much a product of its time. And “Pretty Woman,” it turns out, wasn’t a throwback at all. It was the future.

The future envisioned by Pretty Woman is played out in The Real Housewives. The “model woman” has gone from chattel property to dangerous rebel to tame consumer, all the while undermining and badmouthing her “friends.” Is this the result of feminism’s struggles for equality? Is it so much accomplishment to have graduated from discussing men to discussing clothes, gossip and beefs?

One could argue that said behavior is no different from the way men and women have behaved for centuries. The women of the Roman Empire undermined each other as much as women today; why should we regard the Real Housewives with anything less than a shrug? Besides, women have finally achieved equality — they tote guns like men, they cuss and strut like men — why shouldn’t they consume and fight like men, too?

In “Educating Rita,” the titular character (Julie Walters) gets a literary education from a professor (Michael Caine). She says she doesn’t want to be stuck in the pub with her clod of a husband singing the same song. But after her education, when she can quote poetry and analyze beauty, she has a falling out with Caine’s character. Caine yells at her that she hasn’t found a better song to sing, merely a different one. The Real Housewives think they are singing a better song — that their money, privilege, and cameras make them better (it’s always about being “classy”) than those around them — but their song is the same as it always has been.

If, at the end of feminism’s long march, women have simply moved from objects of consumerism to subjects of consumerism, has it accomplished that much? If freedom from subjugation just means the freedom to be empty, heartless, cruel, vapid and materialist, what good is it anyways? In a world of such massive remaining inequalities — entrepreneurship gaps, lack of female leadership at Fortune 500 companies, lack of female legislators (17 female Senators!), etc. — is this truly where feminism ends?

I want to end with a note about class: the upper-class Real Housewives always hold “classiness” and “class” as the most important indicators of a person’s worth. A good person is “classy”; a bad person “classless.” It’s possible that the Real Housewives simply reveals the class distinctions in feminism as a whole — that married-rich, privileged, “classy” women have more in common with their income bracket than with other women who work two jobs and provide the bulk of domestic labor for their families. As Chocano points out, “Pretty Woman” was ultimately a money story, not a love story. Maybe feminism is ultimately a money story, too, not a solidarity story.

________

TAKE TWO

We Heart: The Real Housewives of SNL
Originally: November 12, 2010 by Kerensa Cadenas · MS Magazine

Bravo’s The Real Housewives reality show is everywhere, whether you watch it on TV or not. On the radio you can hear Kim Zolciak or the Countess LuAnn singing about money or parties. At the supermarket you can see Teresa Giudice on the cover of a tabloid, refuting claims that her husband is cheating, or pick up a bottle of Bethenny Frankel’s Skinnygirl Margaritas (only 100 calories!).

The Real Housewives is a franchise, artificially gathering groups of well-off women in (so far) Atlanta, New York, Orange County, Beverly Hills, New Jersey and Washington D.C. They’re put on display shopping, parenting, partying … and constantly arguing with each other. (Yes, I have to admit I watch the show.)

Needless to say, the Housewives aren’t painting a progressive picture of women today. I would argue (and I’m certain Betty Friedan would agree) that their catty, unsupportive behavior and horrendous botoxed beauty standards are not particularly feminist nor empowering.

Imagine my delight, then, when I heard that the very funny women of Saturday Night Live past and present, including Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Molly Shannon and Kristen Wiig, parodied a Real Housewives reunion special (complete with the show’s real host, Andy Cohen).

The parody is spot on, complete with various “housewives” storming off the set, pulling another’s hair weave, singing with the benefit of Auto-Tune, and pitching their latest products (Shannon was selling everything lowfat, including “lowfat medications” and “lowfat cocktails”). Beyond the hilarity is a smart critique of women’s regressive behavior on these shows, and beyond that a commentary on reality TV in general.

Fans of the Real Housewives tune in–guiltily or not–to see precisely what the women of SNL make fun of: vacuous, backstabbing “bitches” spending money and drinking all day. They also see rigid beauty/fashion standards, gay men treated as stock characters and race used as “ethnic spice” (at least when it comes to the Atlanta women).
So, thank you, SNL women, for laying some real humor on the inadvertently humorous housewives–and for making subtly serious points along the way. I’m in agreement with Jenn Pozner here: “I’m not saying you have to divorce the Real Housewives,” says the author of Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV. “I’m just saying you have watch with your brain engaged.”

Photo with permission from NBC Universal

 

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