If you watch Vanderpump Rules online, you know that this season has been about two things:
1. Tom and Katie’s wedding (and formerly one-note nice-guy Tom revealing himself to be as amusing a hot mess as anyone else on the show.)
2. And the politics of the show’s primary chick clique, with Stassi (probably temporarily) abdicating her HBIC throne to bride-to-be Katie.
Throughout the season, Ariana Madix has been on the outside looking in, having lost her most formidable ally when mean girl extraordinaire Lala Kent quit the show back in August.
Early on, Ariana made the baffling decision to side with Lala and James Kennedy, who is – and let us not mince words here – nothing but an entitled, egomaniacal abusive misogynist who may well have a bright future in presidential politics.
Despite what appeared to be a deepening rift between the two factions of the Vanderpump cast, there were rumors of hatchets buried and apologies issued during the filming of this year’s reunion show.
Which is why so many were caught off guard when Lala threw some unprovoked (and bafflingly random) shade at Stassi on a recent episode of Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live.
During a quiz about her former cast mates, Lala accused Stassi of lying about being from New Orleans, stating that the 28-year-old actually hails from a “white suburb” on the outskirts of the region.
Ariana seemed to side with Lala (as she so often does), prompting Stassi to publicly what she’d done to provoke the bartender.
“Wake me up when you find out whatever it is I did to [Ariana],” Stassi wrote.
Ariana responded, “It’s not about me, it’s how you treat people.”
Madix included a link to an article about a recent episode of Stassi’s podcast in which the reality star discussed the 2017 Academy Awards and decried what she saw as a situation in which art was overshadowed by racial politics.
Stassi replied to Ariana’s tweet with a scathing retort with some shade about Ariana’s failed attempt at podcasting:
“Thank u for my podcast shout out. If yours would’ve had success, then maybe u would’ve accidentally f–ked up on your words at some point.”
Does Ariana have a point in this particular argument?
Yes, but to be fair Stassi has fully accepted the blame for the ignorance of her statement.
At this point, Ariana’s insistence on pointing to a past slip-up rather than sticking to the issue at hand smacks of the rhetorical equivalent of running and hiding.
To say nothing of the fact that these days, Ariana is awfully vulnerable to being called out for a shocking lack of woke-ness, herself:
In fact, she’s proven herself so self-servingly hypocritical that in most cases, her high-minded moralizing is thoroughly undermined by her recent words and deeds.
Madix calls herself a feminist while defending the actions of Lala Kent, a young woman who’s most memorable moments from this season involved body-shaming her castmates and mocking women who aren’t attractive enough to receive free transportation in private jets.
Ariana is the same woman who called herself the smartest person she knows (a statement so egregiously dumb it serves as its own counter-argument), but who routinely pulls co-workers and castmates into the most inane squabbles imaginable.
We guess such hypocrisy shouldn’t be surprising coming from a woman who proudly boasts about “taking comedy seriously.”