BETTER TO BURN OUT THEN FADE AWAY: THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF D.C.
Over a decade after being the only Housewives franchise to have been canceled after a single season (one which resulted in a national security crisis), The Real Housewives of D.C. is in the zeitgeist.
On Monday, Peacock opened the Bravo Vault and put vintage shows up for streaming (notably absent is anything related to Kathy Griffin, but that’s a tale for another Substack). Among them, cult favorites like Gallery Girls and NYC Prep, vintage classics like Tabatha Takes Over, The Rachel Zoe Project and Blood, Sweat and Heels and the controversial one-season wonder of The Real Housewives of D.C.
The Real Housewives of D.C. premiered on Bravo in 2010 as the fifth city to join the franchise. But already on its August premiere, the show had been talked about for months and months on a national scale due to the fact that one of their cast members crashed the White House for the first ever Obama state dinner in November of 2009 while they were filming the first season which ended up being such a fixture on evening news through the beginning of 2010 that by the time the show aired, it was stale.
The wife is question is named Michaele Salahi, pictured above with current-prez then-veep Biden, taken on some shitty digital camera she also snuck in and posted to Facebook.
Like dead ass posted it on Facebook. I’ve heard about this before, but when Bravo announced the release onto streaming, I’ve become fixated on her. She was, in a lot of strange and unexpected ways, ahead of her time. In fact, it’s a shame that this all happened when it did, because Salahi would be a fixture on modern Housewives which thrives on legal trouble, shocks, and most of all, scammers. Michaele Salahi is a true Wild Thing.
Before going into her story, which involves lying about being an NFL cheerleader and a certain journey with a Journey man which involves a kidnapping hoax, let’s look at the rest of the cast to round out the D.C. series.
Cat Ommanney
“I’m here for a good time, not a long time.”
She’s British. She’s rude. She’s problematic and says mildly racist things. She’s always slurring. She loves George W. Bush. She left her husband for a White House photographer she knew when she was 18 and moved her two daughters to America to be with him and star on a reality show. Unsurprisingly, after the show was canceled, they divorced. Recently, she told Page Six she had an affair with Prince Harry.
Similar Housewives: Ramona Singer, Dorit Kemsley
Lynda Erkiletian
"I give people enough rope to hang themselves, and the smart people don't."
Lynda is the HBIC of The Real Housewives of DC, and I feel that if there had been a second season, it would have directly had to do with the other girls, namely Cat and Michaele, becoming fan favorites and breakout stars without having the local cache of Lynda’s history. She runs a high profile modeling agency in DC and has three grown children from a previous marriage and a much younger, tall, hot boyfriend named Ebong.
Similar Housewives: Lisa Vanderpump, Carole Radziwill
Mary Amons
"I don't make money, I spend money."
Mary fits into the mold of Housewife we’ve seen across franchises who comes on the show to divorce her husband. They have six kids and it’s clear that Mary cannot stand that man. She’s also of a Washington pedigree as the granddaughter of Arthur Godfrey, who my millenial ass had never heard of. She’s kind of the biggest dud on the season, except for when she gets really white girl wasted at parties.
Similar Housewives: Meredith Marks, Tamra Judge
Stacie Turner
"DC is my town and I thrive in it."
Stacie is the normal one, but unlike Mary, brings a really interesting storyline. She was adopted and finds out that her birth mother is white and has never told her family about having a child with a black man while having been in the Peace Corps. Other than that, she’s fairly level headed even with dealing with the problematic and thinly veiled racist sentiments of her other castmates (Cat Ommanney has feelings about Obama and admits to love George W. Bush because he RSVPed to her wedding; Mary got blotto and said they need to desegregate salons). Unfortunately, Stacie also has really bad views on gay marriage, which stops her from ever being able to truly be the voice of reason.
Similar Housewives: Garcelle Beauvais, Dolores Catania
Now that we are familiar with the supporting players, let’s get into the reason for the (only) season: Michaele Salahi.
"People have a hard time saying no to me and that's just been my blessing."
It’s hard to know where to begin with Michaele, because it’s hard to believe anything that comes out of her raspy voice. At first, when Lynda is questioning her thinness by saying Michaele should eat a hamgburger with fries, it seems harsh. But soon, there’s lawsuits coming out against her winery that could lead to them filing for bankruptcy (they do), and then a lie about whether or not she was a Redskins cheerleader (she was not) and all this came out before the State Dinner fiasco, which took place in the penultimate and final episodes before the Reunion. That also wasn’t the only time they snuck into a dinner. Earlier in the season, there was drama about whether or not they had invitations to the Black Caucus Dinner which they attended (they did not!).
It’s so striking to re-watch The Real Housewives of DC in 2024. Scandals and scammers have become a driving source of our cultural curiosity. In the real world, we have Anna Delvey, Caroline Calloway, Billy MacFarlane and on Bravo, storylines have been pushed forwrd by the alleged financial fraud of Erika Jayne’s husband Tom Girardi on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills or Jen Shah’s arrest and subsequent trial and sentencing on the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. Maybe Michaele was ahead of her time. A trendsetter, if you will.
Epilogue: Where is Michaele now?
Michaele has since gotten a divorce from Tareq, and in doing so still couldn’t help herself from doing it in the most dramatic way possible. In 2012, Tareq filed a missing person report on Michaele, claiming to believe that she had been kidnapped. As it turns out, she was not kidnapped but actually had run off with guitarist and founding member of Journey, Neal Schon. Don’t worry, the story has a happy ending. They’re still together!
Well behaved women rarely make history <3