it's hard out here for a rich, white ho

The Real Housewives of Orange County is the latest noxious emission from the compost heap that is reality television. It chronicles the lives of Kimberly, Jo, Lauri, Vicki, and Jeana--five “real” housewives from Orange County. This Bravo series represents everything I despise about the county in which I reside: the superficial addictions of rich snobs who revel in their faux drama and self-absorption.

Rebecca Schoenkopf gives us the low down on this show about their "little Hitler" kids and their penchant for silicone breasts and mass quantities of chilled chardonnay (the thought of chardonnay makes me want to puke).

They live in Coto de Caza, a large gated community where the median price for a single-family home is $1.3 million.

Most of the mansions actually have breathing room—an acre here, an acre there—instead of million-dollar homes built within inches of their lot lines. These are proper mansions, nothing Mc- or chintzy about them. And behind its gates, Coto even still has an orange grove. Coto’s a pretty sweet place to live, if you like marble, and beige, and children driving brand-new Mercedes. And if you, like I, like to watch rich people behaving badly—and is there any other explanation for the popularity of Donald Trump?—you’ll like Coto just as much. And you, like I, will realize that these people are the true Orange County, just as J.R. was the soul of Dallas, and Kurt Cobain really was Seattle

Schoenkopf compares the show’s subjects to Tom and Daisy in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the rich couple who carelessly destroyed things and let others clean up their messes. As for the people:

The women were nice, and ladylike, and funny and outgoing, and they looked far prettier in person than on the telly. Kim had looked manly on the teevee; in person her features were softer and sexy. Lauri had looked plastic, the light and video catching awkwardly on what seemed to be less-than-organic features; at the table at the Coto country club, she was gorgeous. Vicki still looked like a rabbit, but I probably would have found her less rabbity if I had liked her as a person.

Honestly, what good do these women serve? Oh yeah, that’s right. They are role models for the working and middle classes of Orange County. We admire their stupidity and superficiality. We crave it!

Schoenkopf writes that the normal people of Orange County are like Schrödinger’s cat whereas Kimberly, Jo, Lauri, Vicki, and Jeana are the real Orange County.

She’s right. The middle class women of Orange County dream of being like these rich superficial snobs. You can see them wearing their Juicy Couture jumpsuits and their furry Ugg boots. Maybe they can’t afford a Hummer or a Range Rover, but they’ll go for an Expedition instead. They want a yacht, an immigrant maid, a big diamond rock and a husband who earns six figures to pay for it all.