NotAboutThePasta

I think her conversational skills, TH quips & blog posts differ so wildly from her published works that it really makes me suspicious as to how much of that was really her writing and how much was the editors. As for her stint at ABC News, I'd really have to see the receipts on what exactly she did to contribute to those stories. Did she win an award or was she on a production team that won an award? Where are the awards in her house? You know Carole would talk about them, display them and they would be behind her on the green screen in her THs. I get the sense that she was part of a production team, coordinating logistics behind the scenes, but not contributing much actual writing. Again, I have to look at her body of work that is publicly available vs what she vaguely claims she did. I'm not trying to take anything away from her love for her husband or her genuine grief over his death, but I suspect that her stepping away from journalism was more about her not being able to hack it on her own than anything else. It's why she never wrote the (contractually obligated) book of essays or the cookbook with Adam. She crafted this identity as a journalist/writer, but she doesn't really have the drive or ability to do it, and it's too late to admit the truth now. Carole talks about her career in journalism the way Sonja talks about her marriage to Old Man Morgan. She's living in the past just as much as Sonja is. These are things that Carole did 20 years ago that have virtually no connection to who she is or the life she leads now. Yet she trots the skeleton of her dead and buried career out as a means to elevate her position in her own mind and prove that she's smarter, more informed and more accomplished than the other women. As with her fudged journalist credentials, I don't believe the spin that Carole puts on any of her endeavors. The only thing she specifically mentions in that article is what we saw on the show, the door-to-door canvassing at the tail end of the campaign. As RHJunkie pointed out, there is no evidence that she did anything for the campaign beyond that. Bethenny even directly asks her why she isn't more actively involved in the election/politics if she's so passionate about it, and Carole demurs that she would have to pick up her life to move to DC. Bethenny counters that there's plenty of politics in NY she could get invovled in, and Carole doesn't have a response. Force was probably too strong a word (Carole just gets me so riled up!), but she was definitely the catalyst for their rapid departure. They had both agreed ahead of time that they weren't going to stay for the whole thing, but the minute Luann showed up Carole started pouting and telling Bethenny she wanted to leave nownownow. They did say goodbye to everyone and then did that kind of weird semi tour of the indoor pool before running out the door once Luann joined them. You're right that Bethenny is also a total asshole during the entire brunch. I'm a fan, and I probably wouldn't have been bothered by her badgering about the construction, but that's just my personality. I fully understand why Jules (or anyone else) would have been annoyed and offended by what she was saying. These are not her friends, she just met them! Take your own advice, B, and "dip your toe in" before you start hammering them like an angry prosecutor. I will grant you that Ramona was bizarrely accepting of George until the whole fracas at the charity event when she had him thrown out. But I don't think Sonja was ever cool with him, even before he got really gross with her. She seemed put off and maybe a little offended that Aviva had tried to set them up. And then as soon as he showed how disgusting he was, she was done with him and only laughed off his presence in social situations because, IMO, she was just trying to keep things light and casual because it all made her so uncomfortable and she didn't want Aviva to feel bad about her pig of a father. Oh I totally agree! The other women, especially Jill, Sonja & Ramona, have been absolutely vile at various points. And I could write for pages and pages about the reprehensible things that Ramona has said and done over the years, expressing virtually no remorse afterwards. My post was specific to Carole because this is the Carole thread, but I don't give the other women a pass for any of their shitty behavior. I do genuinely enjoy Bethenny, but she can be wretched and sometimes hard to watch. Her behavior towards Jules was unforgivable, especially since she should know better and be more sympathetic given her insider's perspective. But I suspect that Bethenny (and Carole) felt incredibly threatened by Jules and her openness about her ED, because it might shine the spotlight on their own food/body issues. I don't think either ever apologized to her or acknowledged how fucked up their beheavior towards Jules was and they really should have. They were next level awful.

What kills me about Carole is her hypocrisy and her lack of honesty. Nothing about her really adds up. She's supposed to be this amazing journalist and author, but really what has she done? She wrote one story that was based on her life, and then some chick lit that piggybacked on the theme. I think What Remains was heavily edited and redone before publishing, and then she had a writing partner for Widow's Guide. I've read her blogs and she is a terrible writer when she writes on her own without an editor. Shockingly bad. Incorrect spelling, grammatical errors, misused words, metaphors that don't make any sense. If she didn't have the Kennedy connection, she never would have gotten a publishig deal. She's not truly a "writer", because she doesn't write and doesn't show any inclination to. After those books, what did she do? She wrote some columns for Glamour, in which getting to interview celebs like the Kardashians was deemed "so her". She couldn't get it together to publish a book of essays, even after several deadline extensions, which ultimately got her dropped by her publisher. She tried to put together some basic ass cookbook with Adam, couldn't sell it to anyone, and it got her dropped by her agent. Since then she's done nothing, save for some little one-pager in Cosmo (this year) about her running the marathon. And with all of those projects she acted like it was the biggest pain in the ass for her to actually have to sit down and write. And her shock! that there are actual deadlines? in writing!?, like she'd never heard of such a thing before. Because Carole loves to play stupid when it suits her. She droned on and on and on about the election and how informed and intelligent she was about it all, yet she did nothing to be actively involved. She didn't work for Hillary's campaing or use her profile on the show to raise money or anything. She just bitched on Twitter. I simply do not buy that someone who was truly a hardworking, ambitious journalist and writer would one day stop and then show no desire to be part of their field after that. Until someone offends her, then she gets up on her high horse about her journalistic pedigree. It's all smoke and mirrors with her. She just flits from thing to thing, and now she's found some amount of fame/popularity on a reality show and it's gone to her head and made her an asshole. She has nothing going on, so she contrives lame ass boring storylines for herself. Adam, the failed cookbook, her feud with Luann, foster kittens and dog weddings, her election mania, the marathon, now the feud with Bethenny. She claims that whoever she is currently beefing with is a Mean Girl, never recognizing that she does all of the things she disdains in others. She talks shit about the other women behind their backs and in her THs, she body shames them, she slut shames them, she lords her supposed intellect and alleged journalistic background over them. She chides the other women for letting a man (Tom) come in between their friendships, yet she turns on her friends when they criticize her boyfriend. Adam is wonderful and perfect and how dare Bethenny or anyone else ever say anything remotely critical or negative about him! She spent the entirety of her relationship with Adam telling everyone that it was super casual and not a big deal and just fun for now, then she tries to claim the breakup was on par with Luann getting a very public and embarrassing divorce. She and Adam are just FWB, yet it would be a betrayal if he dated someone else. And she has no self-awareness that 1) this is probably what he did to Nicole when he started seeing Carole and 2) he conveniently shows back up for filming and paid/sponsored vacations. She behaves badly and then hides behind stronger friends in order to get away with it and she never owns up to anything. She laughs off the possibility that Nicole might have been hurt by the situation with Adam or that it might be awkward for Luann. No one knew about the pedo joke she made until Carole brought it up on the show, and Carole's the one who kept giving it life by dragging out that ridiculous overwrought feud with her. She forced Bethenny to leave Jules' brunch because Luann was there, and then let B take the fall for it. She claims to be a feminist and about female empowerment, yet she excused and encouraged George's disgusting and sexually predatory behavior. She was absolutely sickening the way she talked about and to Jules about her eating disorder, yet she somehow skates on all of that. And I could maybe overlook some of these things, and have a small amount of sympathy for her deep-seated insecurity, if she wasn't such a smug petty bitch while acting like Cool Girl.