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Today’s Lesson in Media Exploitation: Real Housewives of NYC Update

As nearly as I can piece it together from the gasping coverage, Real Housewives of New York City star Ramona Singer offered to bring the wine for a charity event hosted by Real Housewives of New York City arch-rival Jill Zarin. Or maybe she didn’t; there’s some disagreement about that.

Singer, for those of you who have forgotten or who have the mental discipline to drive unpleasant thoughts out of your mind, licenses her name and likeness to a manufacturer of Pinot Grigio so it can sell “Ramona” wine to people who think Ramona is just so glamorous and want to drink the same stuff she drinks so they can be glamorous, too.

I’m losing track here because this celebrity gossip stuff is tough to sort out. I think to do it well you’d need a team of the kind of social scientists who study identical white rats and can tell them apart even though they look completely the same.

Anyway, Jill believed Ramona was going to donate all the wine necessary to get a crowd of the idle rich lubed enough to overspend on her charity auction. According to Ramona:

Her assistant asked me to donate wine for the ladies because they had no other wine to serve.

Which, if you think about it, is the perfect justification for serving celebrity-endorsed Pinot Grigio: we didn’t have anything else.

But then Ramona only brought a single case. Which was fine with Jill because she didn’t want Ramona’s stinky old wine anyway:

Once I saw the wine I told Ramona that the caterer only set up martini glasses and that we wouldn’t be able to serve it anyway — but we were happy to have it for the silent auction to raise money for the charity.

Except that Ramona doesn’t think that’s what happened at all:

It was my girlfriend’s idea who said let me bid on one bottle and donate to the charity.

Jill, of course, sees it differently:

We set up the wine on the silent auction table and after people bid on it Ramona tore into the case of wine and started drinking it

Except that Ramona insists she didn’t tear into anything that wasn’t already set aside to be torn into:

The wine I and the other women were consuming was the wine brought to serve as requested.

So we’ve got Ramona — who is just so glamorous, remember — trying her best to benefit the underprivileged and keep her buzz on all at the same time. On the other side there’s trollish Jill — who clearly has insecurity issues, if you ask me — saying all kinds of mean things.

And the result of all this is another round of publicity for their show and another 3,000 online mentions of Ramona Pinot Grigio, and all it costs is Ramona herself looking like a stupid, petty bitch. I’m guessing that’s a trade she’ll make any day because who cares what people like me think as long as we spell her name right and the fat women in stretch pants keep watching and buying her wine?

And its all my fault and I feel dirty for having been a part of it.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 23rd, 2011 at 8:03 AM and is filed under Celebrity Wine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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