It’s a good thing that Bethenny Frankel’s show comes on in the morning, because it would take a jolt of morning coffee to keep up with all the shenanigans that went on today (October 30). The former Housewife turned talk show host invited her nemesis Omarosa Manigault on so they could hug it out, a la Oprah and Iyanla. But Omarosa didn’t come ready to make nice, she had some things to set straight. While her opening line made the audience so mad they booed, it set the tone for the rest of the segment. Omarosa said: “It's different for you and I, I am an African-American woman. You get to walk around and be mediocre and you still get rewarded with things. We have to be exceptional to get anything in this business."
Now, any woman bold enough to come on another woman’s television show and announce that the host is mediocre, well, that’s a woman who is not about to back down. Bethenny should have considered that, but instead she went on to dispute Omarosa’s remembrances of what got them into this bad space. To hear Omarosa tell it, Bethenny went on The View in 2010 and said she was not like Omarosa because she had a “real career.” Bethenny’s retelling is a little hazier as she believed she merely emphasized all that she had done, but did not say Omarosa didn’t have a career.
What Bethenny and her staff apparently forgot was that a transcript of the View exchange exists. Omarosa had someone pull it up on her phone and Bethenny, who’d agreed to give Omarosa $10,000 if indeed she had said the insult, then read aloud the transcript containing the line “she doesn’t have a real career.”
Fresh out of $10,000, you might think that Bethenny would have brought her attitude down a few pegs. But she was still smarting from being called mediocre and Omarosa was still slinging lines like, “I worked at the White House, you made cupcakes, get a grip” in her rant about how she had a career and a brand that could dance circles around cupcake/cocktail making Bethenny.
It was cringe-inducing for anyone who wanted to see two grown women conduct themselves with dignity on television. And while Omarosa had many good points to make (as in, she definitely has a career, one that includes a teaching gig at Howard University), she could have made them differently. It could have even potentially evolved into a discussion on racial and gender privilege, a topic that Omarosa skirted and which she is in a qualified position to speak on. Instead, it devolved quickly into mudslinging.
This is likely because Omarosa and Bethenny did not build their brands, their careers or whatever they want to call it by making cupcakes or working in the White House. The public only knows who they are because they went toe-to-toe in every catfight on their respective reality shows and emerged as breakout stars. The endless bickering that they engaged in this morning — I  said, you said, no I didn't, yes you did, I have two NY Times bestsellers, I did a show with Donald Trump and on and on and on — is what they do and what they do well. Let's rejoice that there won't be an opportunity to do it all again tomorrow morning.
The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of BET Networks.
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