Tom Sandoval: Cheater and Sad Sausage
Tom Sandoval, a cheater and the protagonist in the Bravo reality TV series “Vanderpump Rules” is the saddest of sad sausages. In a recent New York Times Magazine profile, “How Tom Sandoval Became the Most Hated Man in America” the mustachioed Lothario shares how his cheating scandal (or “Scandoval”) has been hardest on him.
I have absolutely no idea why the New York Times (All the News That’s Fit to Print) decided that Tom Sandoval’s wandering dick merited this much introspection. Over the last year people have sent me articles on the Scandoval. I’ve demurred on snarking because I assumed everyone on reality TV cheats and that’s rather the point of the spectacle. Well, that and lavish tacky lifestyles and improbable cosmetic surgery. You would’ve expected that Tom Sandoval, a man who looks composed entirely of used motor oil and hair pomade, is a cheater, right?
Well, apparently it came as a shock in Season 10, when it was revealed that Sandoval was having an affair with another cast member, behind the back of his girlfriend of nine years — Ariana Madix — and the show’s producers. Which, when you consider the guy’s on camera all the time, is quite a feat of deception.
What is Vanderpump Rules?
The reality show began as a look at a friend circle in Los Angeles of bartenders and waitresses trying to break into acting and modeling. Then as the show became popular, it morphed into reality TV stars being reality TV stars and trying to figure out how to suck the cultural relevance tit as long as possible. (Answer: podcasts.) And now it’s a Tom Sandoval cheater fucktangle. (Ratings spike!)
You’ve lost me, Tracy.
After the season aired, Raquel Leviss, with whom Sandoval had the affair, entered a mental-health facility in Arizona and started going by a different name. Ariana Madix, Sandoval’s now-ex-girlfriend, garnered so much national sympathy that she has had the most prosperous year of her career. In addition to being invited to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and to compete on “Dancing With the Stars,” she landed ads with Duracell batteries, Bic razors, Uber Eats and Lay’s chips, as well as a starring role in “Chicago” on Broadway this winter. Sandoval, meanwhile, became the most reviled man in America and the butt of a million jokes. Jennifer Lawrence made fun of his skin. Amy Schumer called him a narcissist. One of the hosts of “The View” called him “the Donald Trump of ex-boyfriends.” And Sandoval has just been here, in the Valley, trying to process it all. “I feel like I got more hate than Danny Masterson,” he told me, “and he’s a convicted rapist.”
Even reality stars hate to be lied to.
Tom seems shocked that people dislike him. And this is the point where I thought the New York Times was going to pivot to the cultural moment of NATIONAL SYMPATHY FOR THE CHUMP. Everyone is #TeamAriana and calling Tom out on his shit. In the reality TV star currency of branding deals, Ariana is ascendant and Sandoval is a has-been. Huzzah!
That would’ve made an interesting feature. Could’ve tied in Shakira’s globally best-selling diss tract. And made chump righteous anger and reinvention cool.
No one — not Sandoval, or Baskin, or even the executives at Bravo — are quite sure why the season resonated the way it did. Maybe it was that “Scandoval” had awakened something in everyone who had ever cheated or been cheated on, resulting in endless memes and diatribes on social media.
But no.
Tom has a sadz.
And when we discuss infidelity that’s where all the attention must go. To the butt-hurt feelings of the cheater. Their motivations. How hard this is on them. Harder really.
Someone put out an all-points bulletin for Esther Perel. Tom’s exuberant act of defiance appears to have shitcanned his dreams. Well, except for his cover band Tom Sandoval & The Most Extras. He’ll always have that.
Late on the evening of March 1, 2023, when principal filming for the 10th season was wrapped and episodes were already airing, Sandoval was performing a new single with his band when his phone fell out of his pocket. Madix opened it to discover an intimate recording of Leviss. The next morning, Madix notified the show’s talent producer, who called the showrunner, who called Baskin, who called Bravo, which scrambled to approve budgets. On March 3, crews were pulled off another Bravo set, and cameras were back up to capture the fallout as the cast processed the affair.
The resulting footage, which aired in May, is an incredible episode of television. Madix, with damp hair and puffy, cried-out eyes, says, “I loved you when you had nothing,” and “That girl is searching for an identity in men,” and “I would have followed you anywhere.” Producers did not put cameras down even as Sandoval screamed at them to stop filming him during the subsequent reunion special, which was so brutal that Amy Schumer compared it to the end of “Schindler’s List.”
Can someone explain how “I would’ve followed you anywhere” is different than “that girl is searching for an identity in men”? No one should seek an identity in Tom Sandoval, who has all the integrity of dandelion fluff.
The midlife crisis cliche
It can’t be that Tom Sandoval is a shallow nitwit with shallow values. No, there must be deeper forces at play. A midlife crisis!
At Sandoval’s house, he made a cup of tea, and Rylie and I were listening to what the past year of his life has been like. The thing with Leviss started with what sounded like a midlife crisis. “You know when you just feel like you don’t know what’s cool anymore,” he said, “and you’re past your prime and a little bit of a joke?” (Rylie nodded.) He started to feel as though his best years were behind him. He wanted to feel alive again. He and Madix had grown apart. He planned to tell her about the affair after the season aired. He didn’t want it to play out on the show. When he shouted at producers to stop filming him, he couldn’t remember another time in the show’s history that he’d done so, unless he was getting in the shower or something. “I just wanted to not feel watched,” he said. “I wanted to take a breath.”
Grown apart. You guys need better writers.
Pity the man who doesn’t want to be intrusively watched, and yet cannot earn a living without intrusively being watched.
No one is #TeamCheater
After he finished filming, he went on tour with his band, Tom Sandoval & the Most Extras. He had to. His bank accounts were overdrawn, and he needed the money. Crowds of people came out to hate on him. They showed up wearing T-shirts that said, “Cheater” and “Worm With a Mustache,” a name one of his castmates coined. Everywhere he went, people called him a loser or screamed “Team Ariana” at him.
When he returned home, there were groups of strangers with cameras at his house who seemed to be making fun of him. On the show, Sandoval had complained about always being the one to replenish batteries and other domestic supplies. Now, as Madix filmed her various commercial spots at the home, it had become ad copy for Duracell (“I buy my own batteries now”) and Bic razors(“I’m just starting a whole new unclogged chapter in my life”). In June, a friend sent him a photo of Sweet Lady Jane, a popular bakery in Los Angeles, selling cakes with “Sandoval Is a Liar”written in frosting.
Sandoval’s friends distanced themselves. His brother asked him to delete photos of them together on Instagram.
To the Los Angeles baker who made cheater CAKEs — Chump Nation tips its hat to you.
Tom, maybe they’re hiring.
I happened across that headline in the NYT and read the first paragraph. My immediate reaction was “I am so glad that I have no idea who this person is and no desire to find out”.
And I moved on to more uplifting stuff, like the war in Gaza.
I guess I’m grateful that CL is reading and rebutting this bullshit, because someone is doing it and that someone isn’t me.
It might cheer CN to read how vilified the guy is for cheating on his GF. Just like with Shakira, I think the narrative is changing — or I hope it is — that cheating on your partner is — at the very least — not cool. And cruel.
I hope you’re right, Tracy. It’s actually very subversive and powerful to suggest that cheating is not OK, it upends a lot of myths. It will change society.
Personally I think the current pro-cheating media spin is entirely wag-the-dog and rather than being a reflection of actual public views, is actually an attempt to “correct” public views. Case in point (pardon my redundancy, I always bring this up), the 2014 Gallup poll that found public prohibitions against adultery have only gotten stronger and stronger over the past twenty years to the point that, on a list of prominent public controversies, adultery was rated as much less acceptable than even human cloning or abortion. It came at the bottom of the list as “most unacceptable” which is why I wasn’t that surprised by the success of Shakira’s song or support for the chump in the reality TV hullabaloo, just saw it as a case of real public views leaking through the spin-doctoring,
After that poll came out I was very curious about the NY Times hysterical editorial response to it. A Times editor used the poll as harem-scarem over the rise of the religious right and how this was infecting public discourse. But the poll proved the Times’ argument was a crock because the same people polled showed increasing acceptance of religiously hued “controversies” like gay marriage and single parenting– in other words, modern public condemnation of adultery appears to be, if anything, somewhat independent of religious mores.
These days I’m starting to wonder if media companies of all political leanings are, since the Clinton impeachment and subsequent #MeToo take downs of public figures and politicians, engaging in “activism” to ensure that the politicians they endorse and their own CEOs can no longer be “cancelled” due to adultery by foisting “acceptance” of adultery down the public’s throats. If you think about it, the SCOTUS Citizens United ruling (another case of the public having unwanted things undemocratically shoved down their gullets) means there’s that much more at stake when politicians that corporate media sponsors pour unlimited quantities of money into are taken out of the running by teenage hackers or anyone with a camera phone for something so “banal” as cheating on a spouse.
In service of the above, trying to force acceptance of rape and harassment down the public’s throats might be too tall an order but I get the sense these entities would probably force it if they could. The Times’ resident rape-minimizer Susan Dominus caused a backlash (that the Times tried to ignore) more than ten years ago by claiming that childhood sexual abuse victims probably wouldn’t be so messed up and traumatized if it wasn’t for public prohibitions against pedophilia and sex in general. It was one of the biggest WTF moments I’ve had reading the Times since the Judy Miller/WMD scandal and I remember wondering “cui bono?” over it. When it turned out the Times had been sitting on the Weinstein story at the time and penalizing a journalist who tried to report it, it became a little more clear who “bono’ed” from it.
No, there’s no media conspiracy to make adultery acceptable for politics’ sake. If it did we’d have a different attorney general in Texas and a different Republican nominee for president. More likely it’s just various luminaries at the NYT feeling a little defensive about their “arrangements”.
I’m glad you’re confident about it because people like Susan Faludi (regarding misogynistic agendas in the media), Chris Hedges, Chomsky, Sheldon Wolin (RIP) and Naomi Klein are not, not to mention Edward Snowden.
Certain politicians screaming about “fake news” kind of remind me of the whole Pizzagate fiasco. The irony of course is that there was a bundle of clues about certain politicians’ potential collusive involvement with a pedophile network, except it wasn’t who the Pizzagaters were pointing fingers at, rather it was who they were defending.
As they say, stopped clocks can be right twice a day. There is a very visible conspiracy in media. It’s called “native advertising” but Judy Miller episodes are also commonplace.
I’m sorry, the names you listed off are people who think there is a media conspiracy to paint adultery as normal and okay so that their favored politicians are elected? If so, it’s possibly the least successful conspiracy of all time.
Not sure if you’re being sincere (guessing not) about thinking I was going for total equivalency and not simply making the case that, if the corporate media often colludes to lie about, say, the existence of WMD as a cause for war and war collateral, etc., not much else could be put past the same sources. That was my point. But, come to think of it, Susan Faludi wrote an eye-rolling diatribe against media promotion of Monica Lewinsky as a “feminist” martyr. Both Chomsky and Hedges have lamented how porn and the violent misogyny it normalizes are promoted as expressions of “liberalism”. Hedges, who’s also a pastor, has discussed a secular and political interpretation of the globally destructive influence of self-idolatry (i.e., modern narcissism) and sin, including adultery.
Oh, and here’s something really fun and possibly relevant: leading evolutionary scientist and primatologist Richard Wrangham argues that, going back to our common ape ancestor with chimpanzees, the evolutionary motive for war has always been about patriarchal sexual control (i.e., sexual freedom for me but not for thee). So it doesn’t surprise me that the NY Times– as a leading pseudo-liberal champion of hegemonic war– would also just happen to be apologistic about anything related to robbing sexual consent. According to Wrangham, it’s all part and parcel.
Is that a conspiracy or a matter of aligned, quasi-Freudian “subconscious psychosexual agendas”? Chomsky touches on “subconscious alignment” in terms of the five filters for the media and why some brilliant journalists don’t succeed. In a roundabout sense he makes that point that, though those hiring fresh reporters straight out of grad school may never consciously rub their hands together and, in a conspiratorial sense, think “I must keep all those indy-thinkers out of our rapey-monkey hegemonic den of iniquity,” that’s still pretty much what happens. Hardly anyone makes it in mainstream journalism if they don’t internalize the party line to a greater degree. Starting as undergrads, many “independent thinkers” get fucked with at every pass until they quit.
Chomsky made the point several times that reference to “conspiracy” is frequently a red herring considering how “internalized” (“unconscious”) political ideological conformity tends to be in our culture.
And THIS is part of why being in Chump Nation is so awesome. Women who THINK!!! An alternative landscape to that of Reality TV idiots. Which is, of course, peopled by cheaters and other shallow immediate-gratification infantiles.
{{{{ }}}}
Sadly, I don’t think it is changing enough/fast enough. There needs to be ZERO tolerance for this, just like there is for drunk driving or insider trading or anything else you can be prosecuted for! Sick of people being able to just ruin lives, abuse people and go on their merry way! But, having said that, we have to start somewhere, right? So thank you, CL, for your blog and helping change that narrative!!! You are Chump Nation’s Champion!!
100% Except sadly, it’s the same-old same-old of: it’s what I want to do. Now. I WANT to. As CL says … consequences … hmmm?
I wouldn’t know about there being zero tolerance for insider trading, given headlines and Coffeezilla’s entire channel during the crypto bubble… or, like, anything I know about the ultra-rich.
Unfortunately, many immoral things are promptly excused. That’s how it is in the media. You can’t dwell on it too much, though, just change what you can and focus on you and your circle of people, wherever you are!
Sage advice!
I guess the dude didn’t get the memo…people everywhere are getting fed up with “entitlement”….even on real trash tv.
Oh boy, celebrity drama. I didn’t know about any of these people beforehand, but I’ll join in on the hate train – choo choo!
Tom, maybe no one cares about your sads because you’re a piece of shit. I don’t promote harassing people in person, but I love the cake. I also love knowing Ariana Madix is out there living his best life, while Tommy boy is out kicking rocks.
Also, I know moving requires money. But if you live in LA and have a reality TV show, I feel like questioning “His bank accounts were overdrawn, and he needed the money.” HOW!? Surely, your show covers reasonable living expenses, and if not, was there not a point during the show where you could have moved? Or maybe trying to sell drama isn’t as lucrative anymore…
I lived and worked in LA for several years. For anyone involved in media. it’s a culture of lackeys and sycophants that has certain parallels with the system of informants under Stalin, the East German Republic or the dark ages. Never mind if your evil boss couldn’t “legally” have you killed, technically they could and most people tend to respond to looming danger by capitulating and curling up into furry balls at the feet of their masters.
Being in that arena in LA was among the sickest and most shocking experiences I’ve ever had because of that power disparity and how few people would stand up for principle in the face of that kind of power. It makes you despair of humanity. It was like living in feudal times when the local lord could have any peasant drawn and quartered for, A) failing to fuck the lord or B) hunting rabbits on their property. Except it’s even sadder and more depressing that people would fold simply if they feared not being famous or “making it.”
Geez. So sorry for your hardcore lessons in Human. But yep. The currency changes, the behaviour is consistent. It’s pretty chimp – status, hierarchy, attention, threat, survival.
(I cannot believe how cynical I sound and believe me I’m not actually living a sad bitter life. Just a life very NOT LA!!! It’s a content life with a graden and a darling dog outside of Sydney Australia, with a small circle of Very Good People).
It’s not cynicism, it’s what a journalist (who’s name I can’t remember) called being a “sunny, macabre realist.” 😀 Plus in an age of celebrity worship and Insta lifestyle envy, I think it’s essential to know all that glitters is not so glam so that people can truly appreciate the simple, sane and beautiful lives they’ve managed to carve out for themselves.
Gosh, I’m taking that – “sunny, macabre realist”. Fantastic, thanks. Agree completely how essential it is to recognise that sparkly is not the goal.
I love the way you describe the real goal, “simple, sane and beautiful”. Just that actual real, as opposed to manipulated, constructed real, is something many don’t/can’t grasp. Takes a sunny, macabre realist to do that 😉
Eh, I think trash TV is still lucrative. But it’s all part of the cheater package. They spend more money than they have. They think they deserve secret sex partners. If they do something nice, they do it very publicly and expect ALL the applause for it.
Oooooh. See, I’ve never been a reality TV and tabloid person, but I have followed a lot of internet drama before, so while I understand some of this celebrity drama sector, there’s a lot I don’t get.
It sounds similar to hypebeast, influencer, and lifestyle internet culture. Constantly spending money you don’t have to project an image that isn’t real. Gotta have that lambo! Or, as you point out, it’s just the cheater protocol. Ex/FW was actually a bit of a stooge when it came to spending because we didn’t have a lot and were very paycheck to paycheck most of the time, so I don’t think of that particular cheater behavior. I know a lot of other chumps have experienced it, though!
Yeah, FW had to project a wealthy lifestyle to the child mistress, which he did by embezzling most of my paycheck to pay her monthly stipend and ancillary expenses. He also had secret credit cards where he spent over $300k and secretly used money from our home refi to pay them off to the tune of $160k the first time (on DDay they were maxed out again at a slightly more reasonable $159k — just kidding!). Unknownst to me at the time, she was getting shopping sprees in very high-end boutiques and stores while I was getting lectures for “overspending” at Target.
Now that he doesn’t have my salary as a slush fund he has major sadz. He can only afford to take her out to a $300 dinner once a week and they’ve only taken 5 vacations and they couldn’t even FLY anywhere–they had to DRIVE to San Diego to stay in a fancy boutique hotel and take a TRAIN to San Francisco where they stayed in a hotel so elite that they don’t even publish their pricing! Like peasants!!
Ugh, I’m the worst, expecting him to help pay for his child and pay me reasonable child support and alimony — even though he is trying very hard not to pay alimony at all and trying to cap his CS at what *he* thinks is fair.
“NOOOOOO I HAVE TO TAKE A MUCH MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY EFFICIENT (and fun!) TRAIN OVER A JET, WOE IS ME.”
Child support enforcement is useless sometimes, I feel. I’m so sorry you’re going through that. Hopefully you aren’t stuck with too much of his debt. Despite all the material excesses he has, your FW sounds as miserable and empty as mine. And that’s nothing to envy.
“Babe, I’ve been meaning to tell you that we have been growing apart.”
That’s amateur league. The real pro move is “Babe, are you telling me you don’t remember last month when I told you that we have grown apart?”
Oh, you’re right, that’s better.
All the news that’s shit to print? The Times’ cheater-bias is starting to stink and sink to such cheesy depths that I’m beginning to suspect the Sulzberger dynasty (Times’ owners for five generations) must be riddled with FWittery. The recent marriage of current poobah AG, as much as his on-camera posturing hints of swinging dickishness, hasn’t been trailed by scandal yet like his dad and former Times’ chairman “Pinch,” who’s gone through wives and girlfriends like a dose of salts in the past 15 years.
Media owners using publications for personal vendettas and platforms is hardly new in any case and I wouldn’t put it past the Times. My view of the Times is mixed because, as a flaming progressive, I appreciate that, every once in a while, enterprising reporters are allowed to do some actually groundbreaking investigative reporting on important issues. But I recognize that the latter is merely part of the usual game by which the mainstream media grubs progressive creds while, the rest of the time, blatantly stumping for corporate interests and hegemony.
Noam Chomsky has repeatedly criticized the Times for policing an artificial frontier for liberal thought that dictates “This far but no further” and which brands and silences those who overstep this artificial boundary as “dangerous radicals.” In that sense the Times has made itself a pressure valve for lukewarm progressives that’s probably more responsible for enforcing corporate rule than even openly neoliberal publications.
Maybe the weirdly relentless and increasingly tacky cheater apologism is just the pus leaking out of a much larger and more dangerous “infection” in the fourth estate. Seriously, how long can powerful media hypocrites maintain the faux-integrity pose before going full “Citizen Kane/Logan Roy” batshit? And/or maybe the Times– like many global media giants (Fox, Google, ABC, etc., etc.)– is covertly cross invested in streaming porn and dating app industries which both arguably depend on adultery for market growth.
Whatever is driving it, it should be incredibly depressing for anyone who believes that democracy depends on a the existence of a free press.
I was just about to “post comment”, the site blinked and it all went POOF. I always ignore my own advice to compose elsewhere then copy and paste here. 😩
So I’ll just say I have vague knowledge of the situation from my scans of the news. I don’t watch this show but I’m VERY glad to hear any stories about a cheater being vilified. Schadenfreudelicious.
I like small doses of reality shows. I get a break from my own problems, I get grateful, my perspective gets calibrated. I get to test my knowledge and command of boundaries, etiquette, and gauge the state of my mental/emotional/psychological health, see how well my moral compass is working. I haven’t yet watched anyone with whom I would want to have a Freaky Friday and change places. Cautionary tales have a place in my world. I appreciate what I learn from them. Like See’s candy, a little reality TV goes a very long way. My therapist mentioned how they are excellent for studying and teaching relationship dynamics. I agree. Little Hammer and I enjoy yelling out our analysis and suggestions for alternative behavior at the TV. 😜
I can veer easily toward being too serious and reality TV helps me lighten up. I have to read a trash novel sometimes to offset all the Heavy Reading.
TrueTori has a great episode where Tori is gutted and screaming at Dean McDermott about cheating on her. Not gonna lie; it lifts my spirits to see cheaters get a taste of their own medicine.
Just a footnote here: we should remember that these shows are not about documenting real life. They are about creating and presenting interpersonal drama for the delectation of strangers. Contestants are selected for their drama potential among other features; a fair proportion of disordered personalities are positively selected-for. Then, the contestants are manipulated by the showrunners to create even more “interesting” conflicts. We don’t get clued-in to that. Finally the shows are edited to make the drama even more arresting. This excuses no one’s behavior or personality…but taking any of these shows as a guide to life seems perilous to me. As well as depressing. (They may also as a byproduct, actually teach Machiavellianism by example, but that’s another issue.)
I was Oprah’s featured guest on her show which aired 4/15/91. Sadly I know first hand about editing reality for ratings and the massive difference between what airs and reality, and this:
“Just a footnote here: we should remember that these shows are not about documenting real life. They are about creating and presenting interpersonal drama for the delectation of strangers. Contestants are selected for their drama potential among other features; a fair proportion of disordered personalities are positively selected-for. Then, the contestants are manipulated by the showrunners to create even more “interesting” conflicts. We don’t get clued-in to that. Finally the shows are edited to make the drama even more arresting.”
…..was my exact experience and the essence of the complaint letter to St. Oprah, who I had previously trusted, which I faxed to her office at Harpo Studios.
I think most people understand and agree with what you shared above. I do. I am not clear what is meant by the “taking any of these shows as a guide to life seems perilous” comment…..
Fiction and non-fiction, program, book, movie, play, can all be instructive. Role-playing in therapy often involves fictional scenarios. I get life lessons from baseball games.
I’m not a candidate for anti-psychotic medication just yet….
🙂
I was Oprah’s featured guest on her show which aired 4/15/91. Sadly I know first hand about editing reality for ratings and the massive difference between what airs and reality.
I think most people understand and agree with what you shared above. I do. You’d have to be pretty dim not to.
However it is edited, there is still a lot to learn, especially if you watch while reading between the lines.
🙂
“Contestants are selected for their drama potential among other features; a fair proportion of disordered personalities are positively selected-for. Then, the contestants are manipulated by the showrunners to create even more “interesting” conflicts.”
100%. It’s an interesting study in abnormal psychology. That’s what got me watching some of these shows. I’ve spotted some classic BPD, NPD and ASPD behaviour.
I don’t know anything about this show or this guy, but I love any platform that supports the truth that cheating is abuse and reviles cheaters. Thank you, Tracy!
A few pertinent facts;
-Scumdoval was cheating on another woman on the show with Ariana. That’s how they got together. So Ariana is a FW. She also knew he cheated on her with another woman, known as Miami Girl, but kept it a secret. So this should not have been a shock to her at all. Scumdoval admits there was one other woman in addition to Miami Girl. I’m betting there were more. This adolescent fourty something fucker wears white nail polish, FFS. He’s in a band. 😄
-The OW is a bunny Boiler. She has a lawsuit against Ariana for “revenge porn.” She is alleging Ariana showed the masturbation video she had sent to Tom to others. She is actually getting some sympathy on that front, although the majority still seem to hate her.
The whole thing is gross. I don’t watch this boring show, but I hatewatch other Bravo shows and participate in snarky discussions about them, so I see all the updates and what the fans of the show are saying. Scandoval has been non-stop for over a year.
Good summary of the drama. I’ve watched Vanderpump here & there over the years and some other Bravo shows as pure escapism. I’ll also add that Tom is upset that his former gf won’t up and leave their mini mansion. They had purchased it for around $2 million and now its value has increased to maybe over $4 million. Arianna the chump wants the house to get sold and each their fair share of proceeds while Tom is refusing to sell and instead wants to give her a lowball buyout. So that is playing out in court along with most likely meritless lawsuit brought by Rachel fka Raquel the beauty queen who tries to also paint herself as the victim. #TeamArianna
I can’t even get myself to hate-watch this stuff because I start feeling like humanity can only be cleansed with fire. Just the sound of participants’ typical brainless, quacking, upspeaking mall rat voices makes me cover my ears. If there’s anything relevant happening on that front, I have to have it filtered by third parties like CL (thank you, first responders, for taking the risk for the rest of us!) or my kids who haven’t lived quite long enough to be existentially terrified by morons.
That’s the only way I can laugh instead of retching. For instance, every time he’s exposed to things like this on social media, one of my sons does the absolute best impression of “Brawdo girl” from Idiocracy (“[Brawndo’s] got electrolytes…”), complete with the inept hand gestures. Puts me on the floor every time.
I totally get where you’re coming from.
I enjoy what I call recreational hatred. It’s not real hatred, because I don’t really give a damn about these people. Snarking about them helps me to feel better. It’s like; “Okay, I may have problems, but thankfully, I will never be like these vapid fools.” My daughter and I watch together, snark, and laugh our asses off. Most of the people in the online discussions I participate in are hilarious and seem like lovely people. I’ve made some nice friends that way. It reminds me of CN, being bonded through a common disdain for shitty people.
I totally understand that – it’s how I feel about internet drama. It’s also just good to know, sometimes – I learn a lot about sponsorships from shady companies, and therefore can avoid them, or know what to watch out for when it comes to content that kids I know may consume.
Thank you for your first responder filtering service! Obviously by today’s post there are actually “culturally relevant” things that crop out of these cesspits. But I still can’t watch them. That was even one of FW’s DARVO accusations– that I wouldn’t “let” him watch Survivor!
In reality I just curled a lip and wouldn’t watch it with him but it’s true that it’s one of my quirkier aversions. Call it baggage, lol. Typically I have a really strong stomach and don’t require trigger warnings when learning about dark shit. But I still have some kind of lingering PTSD associated with– how to put it– the collective, conformist bigotry of brainless bystanders (as opposed to a single individual with intellectual impairment who could be movingly innocent and candid). Reality stars are always that quintessential type. It stems from times I’ve seen certain serious injustices play out where idiot bystanders doing the wrong thing led to tragedy. Somehow it reminds me of the dangers of “mob mentality” and I start feeling dystopian dread.
It’s probably mostly the stupid bullying and triangulation at the center of most of these shows that remind me of that but there’s still something fundamentally scary about “agentic” people who act and think in uniform ways to the point of insensibility. I even have to fast-forward past the parts in fictional films where an endangered character tries desperately to reach out to others for help but comes up against a brick wall of denial like in Life is Beautiful where the protagonist Guido tries to appeal to his former riddle pal to help his family escape the death camp but Dr. Lessing just mindlessly drones on about riddles. Shudder.
“I assumed everyone on reality TV cheats and that’s rather the point of the spectacle.”
You said it, CL. This IS the point of this spectacle. They want to get the IDEA of cheating out there to the general public to get people used to the idea (and hopefully to practice it). It’s psychological conditioning or “grooming” and the people who REALLY run our society have been doing this for decades.
No, there’s no conspiracy to brainwash the public. Drama and personal conflict is what drives reality TV, and the contestants are meticulously vetted to make sure they’re messy. If it were a show about kind, put-together people behaving decently towards each other, nobody would watch it.
Dear ApidaeChump,
I think you’re absolutely right that, if reality TV were about kind people with integrity behaving decently, it wouldn’t help ratings. But the fact that you lead many responses with and aggressive and negating “No” suggests that you imagine you’re correcting fallacious thinking errors.
Maybe you should be more open about your favored political views so that others understand what biases and bents you might personally harbor similar to the “full disclosure” asked of people with strongly religious perspectives.
Actually, they don’t all cheat and cheaters are usually dealt with pretty harshly, at least on the RTV shows I watch.
So no, there’s no conspiracy to brainwash people.
“So brutal, it was like the ending of Schindlers list”, and his brother requested he delete photos where they appear together! Pleeeezz! Oh the humanity, oh the tragedy, oh the ignomy! If I knew who this pretentious ” celebrity ” is, I still wouldn’t give a flying Philadelphia Frittata about his stinging butthurt… but as a chumped husband I cannot suppress a sly smile at the warm thought that Karma wasn’t held up in traffic and she came through in a glorious manner for a richly deserved comeuppance.
This POS also compared himself to George Floyd.
You gotta be making this up at this point. I know it’s reality TV, so most of it is staged, but no adult would say that out loud, right..?
One would think so, but he is that full of himself.
Oh my God that’s so beyond the beyond. Why not Jesus while he’s at it?
Basically, he’s Anne Frank, if you really think about it. Also, Emmett Till. And a sufferagette.
Anne Frank and Emmett Till?? Fuck, I just bust a gut (I still have a residual post-laughing grin and my face hurts, damn you). You have a very surgically precise and sophisticated sense of irony, CDC.
I’m glad I could share some giggles! I could say he’s on par with Marsha P. Johnson, something something Jeanne d’Arc, and I think I’ve killed the joke. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!
😄
Here’s a laugh – the OW is not only suing Sandoval, she’s suing Madix. It boils down to “I had to ride that dick, for my own good. Yours too! Ratings, don’t you know.” Snippets below.
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/raquel-leviss-sues-tom-sandoval-ariana-madix-vanderpump-rules-scandoval-1234978517/
“To be clear, Leviss has repeatedly acknowledged that her actions were morally objectionable and hurtful to Madix. She has offered numerous apologies. There is more to the story, however.
Leviss alleges she was “imbibed and emotionally raw” following her breakup with cast member James Kennedy when she started to confide in Sandoval and rely on him for emotional support. She says Sandoval told her his relationship with Madix was in a “dire state” and about to end, even though they continued to live together.
“On or about August 10, 2022, Leviss and Sandoval began sleeping together. The affair continued apace as Sandoval’s relationship with Madix further deteriorated. Although purportedly secret, the affair was, in fact, well-known to may cast members and suspected by others. Leviss and Sandoval were not particularly discrete. Leviss is informed and belies, and on such information and belief alleges, that Madix knew about it as early as the Fall of 2022. Indeed, in December of 2022, Madix scolded Leviss and Sandoval for being handsy in public, admonishing them to save the story for Season 11,” the lawsuit states.
An allegation that it was played up for the show, interesting! Isn’t that true for all reality TV, though? Like… I just assumed that was the case, personally. No surprise there. And, uh, even if Madix knew about the cheating before it was revealed to the public, it’s still cheating.
What kind of apology is “I’m suing you”?
A genuine FW one
The more I hear about the NYT anymore the less I am inclined to believe anything that makes it past editorial.
Perhaps it was all the vacation I had in me, but I made it a whole three paragraphs before the sour belches came back reading this.
Why, yes. This Tom person(whoever the hell he is) should be sad-he cheated! He has admitted that he abused somebody on a national basis. And made a spectacle of it(screwed up as all of our situations are-at least it didn’t make National news for most of us I hope)!
Actions have consequences. He isn’t special. Karma is a bitch.
Sadly I imagine the people buying tickets to come and hate watch his show don’t realize that they’re feeding the beast(literally if he is broke!)
If we are going to openly discuss cheats in the media, can we get one of those Vice TV limited series and do celebrity interventions or something? Take the naughtiness out of it and make it ugly like drug addiction? Get some Fuckwits-In-Training back in line?
I’m sure this was in the Style section, or Arts & Leisure, or whatever they’re calling it now. The news-adjacent parts of the NYT have always been lower quality.
But my family generally believes the overall quality has gone down, including my uncle who once ran the thing (on weekends, anyway).
Being a woman of a certain age, and not a fan of reality TV (life is real enough for me, thankyouverymuch), I had no idea who Tom-Tom the Cheater Man even was. So of course, I Googled him. Even his picture reminds me of a LaBrea tar pit… black, slimy and bubbling up with hot stinky gases.
And that’s when I spotted the latest drama-inducing headline, “Onetime “Vanderpump Rules” star Rachel Leviss, whose affair with fellow cast member Tom Sandoval was one of the Bravo show’s biggest story arcs, filed a bombshell lawsuit Thursday accusing him and co-star Ariana Madix of being involved in producing and distributing revenge porn against her.” Ai yi yi yi.
A pounding headache comes on whenever we give attention to crazy public people who are as close to gold fish in a glass bowl as you can get. I get it though, as an indicator of a shallow Nation with time to kill…. But still some abhorrence of cheaters. A NYT waste of” ink”. But if the word is getting out and we can, as a country, smell the skunks🦨 and pull them out of the woods, the more power to us. My 2-xHCheaters loved the cake and frosting 🥳 parties, using me and OW as a duo desert. I didn’t have cameras to tell me the story, but the party was over as soon as I knew. Both tried to cover up, both cried the blues when it was over and both married their OW right away to look as good as possible. Trying so hard to show publicly that it was ME and not them that had all the issues. I don’t know how happy these 2 cheaters are( NC X2), but I do know the air I breathe is free of skunk 🦨🦨fumes and I’m still holding the fork that was with the cake.🍴🎂. That’s what Tracy’s wit, wisdom and humor, along with CN stories each day- have taught me. Thank you one and all. Now I will take my 2 ibuprofens.
I have been waiting for this article for a year!!!
As Kitty says to Robert in Oppenheimer: “You don’t get to commit the sin and get us to feel sorry for you because it has consequences.”
Different show but… my 17-year-old roped me into watching “Love Is Blind” Season 6 and it’s been just fantastic education about romantic relationships. I am not being sarcastic. Many of the men flip completely from utterly charming to cold and cruel. Thank you, Love is Blind Season 6, for creating a teachable moment for my poor father-abandoned traumatized kid.
YES! CeciliaRegina275 on Tiktok and Mel Hamlett on Tiktok and YouTube have broken down all the manipulation going on and how folks like Jimmy, Jimmy’s female friends, and Matthew identify and exploit the women’s insecurity. Cecilia also does a fantastic job of outlining how Jessica pretends to support women with one breath and then proposes herself as hotter and better in the next. So glad you mentioned Love is Blind and happy your daughter is learning these lessons so early.
Quite happy to continue, after this, not knowing or caring who any of these people are…
But oh gee, the fuckwit cheated on the other woman he cheated on his previous girlfriend with? I’m sure Madix is just SHOCKED at not being the Super Special Snatch she thought she was 🙄
But it’s fine cos Madix and the OG Chump are buddies I guess? Or some performative Paltrow nonsense like that, for the cameras.