Mrs. Morrissey

Shortly before he died, Mr. Armstrong told reporters and friends that his myriad problems — financial, marital and personal — were aggravated, if not caused, by the show. This is not hard to see. He was playing a dour jerk and bankrolling the production that was meant to prop up his wife with his dwindling fortune. No wonder his finances and marriage fell apart…Mr. Armstrong said he’d felt pressure to live large in order to attract the cameras, and make sure his wife qualified for the attention of viewers looking to ogle the lives of the rich. Not only, then, did Mr. Armstrong have to act a part, he had to produce and pay for certain key scenes — footing the bill for parties and shopping sprees.

Virginia Heffernan’s piece on how reality TV needs “reformation” is such a crock of shit. As if we’re supposed to feel sorry for Russell Armstrong—a man with a criminal and violent history that began way before his appearance on Housewives—because he was trying to pretend that he was wealthier than he really was in order to make his trophy wife feel better about herself. That’s not a problem caused by reality TV, but rather, one that’s been exposed by the genre. Living above one’s means was part of the American dream for years until the housing bubble burst. Suddenly it’s the spotlight that burned these people and not their own torrid desire to be in it?

No. Anyone who goes on reality TV cannot play the “I didn’t know what I was signing up for” card. Every show has extensive contracts that quite literally spell out everything a subject is signing up for.

And the irony in quoting Danielle Staub as a reliable source on how being on reality TV can ruin lives is laughable. That bitch ran to the press to give interviews right after Russell Armstrong died to help extend her 15 minutes.

What it boils down to is that people don’t go on reality TV to make friends—and the results those motivations yield are often not very friendly. Reality TV isn’t the problem. Assholes are—and they always will be, whether or not reality TV is ever “reformed.”

I found out today that I’m probably not eligible to deliver in the birthing center because my baby is too big. She’s already an estimated 9 lbs and my due date is still several weeks away. I was told to immediately cease taking my prenatal vitamins and now I wish I’d thought to ask why. At the time I was too busy having a daymare, about what is about to happen to my vagina when it squeezes out a 10 lb baby, while pretending to look like I was paying attention to what I was being told.

Husband: [Rubbing my belly] I wish I had someone inside me.

Me: Aww, really?

Husband: Yeah. Can you finger my asshole?

To expound upon the janky-ass office bathroom we had at BUST that I mentioned yesterday, the only way that I could get my bosses to agree to invest money in improving its quality (like a door that had a doorknob, walls that weren’t literally crumbling, floors that didn’t have broken tiles, a toilet seat that wasn’t cracked, etc.) was to let me renovate it myself and turn it into a DIY feature for the magazine.

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