When you think A List: Dallas, Bravo’s show following very well-manicured gay Texan men doing whatever it is that very well-manicured Texan gay men do (have lunch with GOP pundits), you automatically think Ann Coulter, right? Well, the gay icon made a recent appearance on the show, sharing a bit of lunch and conversation with [...]

Patti Stanger is inept primarily because she’s delusional.

The star of Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker, Stanger prides herself on her savvy ability to create romantic relationships from mid-air. Now in its fifth season, the show thrusts millionaires – usually men – into a roiling stew of potential mates – usually women. Patti lays down ground rules, a match is made, and all are happy.

If you’re like me, then, only a few hours ago, you had no idea who Patti Stanger is. In fact, just hearing the phrase “Millionaire Matchmaker” makes me want to look into prices for mountainside hermit cabins and when a friend linked to an article entitled “In Praise of Queens” this morning on Tumblr, I assumed it was about the borough. That being said, I’m as fascinated by a big media meltdown as much as the next guy so, for everyone who hasn’t been following the story, here’s a run down on why a large community is furious at Stanger and how she made things even worse today on HLN.

If you’ve ever watched Bravo’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, you’re all too familiar with the dramatic arc created around the distant relationship that Taylor Armstrong had with her husband, investor Russell Armstrong. Since the show aired, Taylor filed for divorce citing verbal and physical abuse, and her estranged husband moved out of their family mansion and into a smaller home belonging to a friend. On Monday, Russell’s friend came home to find that the reality star hand hanged himself. Without a suicide note, there’s no way of telling what eventually drove him to take his life, although his large amount debt, the dissolution of his marriage and the stress of the show (Time‘s “Tuned In” blog points to a People magazine interview wherein Mr. Armstrong admitted the show “has literally pushed us to the limit.”) could not have made life terribly easy.

There you are, reading your Bible on a Friday night (just stay with me on this), and thinking “You know what? These women really know how to bring the drama. They’d make for great TV!” Right?

Well, Ty Adams, an evangelist and CEO of Heaven Enterprises, is creating a spin-off of Bravo’s popular “Real Housewives” franchise focused on married and single women living Christian values. The show, called “The Real Housewives of the Bible,” will feature much less table-flipping and weave-pulling than its predecessors, and will also be based on fictionalized characters based on women from the Bible, not “real” women. So why watch?

Anderson Cooper appeared on the Bravo show Watch What Happens Live and was subjected to the age-old question of boxers or briefs? Rather than take a side in the partisan battle, Cooper proudly declared he wore both. NeNe Leakes, star of Bravo‘s The Real Housewives of Atlanta, was sitting next to Cooper and was dismayed to learn Cooper goes “marching around in briefs.”

Bad move. Hours before tonight’s finale of Top Chef airs on Bravo, the network published a clip from the reunion show on Bravo.com. The contents of the clip? Well, it’s Bravo’s Andy Cohen congratulating the victor on his or her win. Hmmm, someone’s probably going to get in trouble for that one. Spoiler-adverse beware! The clip after the jump gives it all up.

Last night viewers of Real Housewives of New Jersey saw some remarkably revealing footage of participant Danielle Staub preparing for what appears to be her fourth breast augmentation surgery. Producers of the show (along with executives at Bravo) made the clear decision to show a whole lot of naked breast, pixelating only her nipples and opting to leave almost all of the surgical procedure footage on the edit floor. You don’t think they were more interested in the breasts and not the surgery?

Confirming what many believed was an inevitable outcome, Bravo will announce today the first season of Real Housewives of D.C. will debut August 5, and Michaele Salahi is part of the cast (and her husband Tareq Salahi is part of the show too).

What may surprise some, but not the cynics, is the Salahi’s White House crashing was filmed for an episode, and will be part of the show too.

Seems like it was year’s ago that the nation was breathlessly waiting for resolution to NBC’s late night line-up drama, that unfolded in a wonderfully entertaining way. Not only did a healthy debate emerge, but there is still a reasonable and ongoing discussion on who were the winners and losers of the whole affair. But no one took it on the chin harder than NBC chief Jeff Zucker, who was pretty much railed for what was fairly seen as his responsibility. But as great a story as that was, it obfuscated a larger narrative about the head of NBC-Universal: he’s had an uncanny knack for nurturing very successful cable channels that have kept his company relatively strong and vibrant.

Yesterday afternoon, CNN broadcast a report on the Japanese rape video game scare, which it had previously covered on its website — and which CNN, by virtue of its reach and influence, may have helped start. Their TV report not only played on misleading us-vs.-them stereotypes about gamers and about Japan, but it brought much more exposure to what CNN itself called a “disturbing” class of games.

Kathy Griffin has brought her Bravo show to Washington, D.C. to lobby for repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but calling House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) “a queen” is getting her the perfectly calculated attention she likely wants to bring to the issue. Griffin told Roll Call’s gossip columnists Emily Heil and Elizabeth Brotherton “I’m meeting with this big queen named Jim Clyburn” and bragged “I’m going to be the first person to ever walk into his office and go, ‘Hey, girl!’”

When looking ahead at the next year, pundits turn into prognosticators. Bloggers covering all sorts of topics and industries are now giving their predictions for what’s to come in 2010. Conventional wisdom says to go the conservative route with these choices in order to avoid looking foolish when none of your projections pan out. At the same time, there’s a key difference between picking things that are realistically possible and those that are already on the road to happening. I’ve assembled my favorite predictions covering a variety of fields and what’s supposedly in store for the near future:

When the decade began, the gay community was recovering from its unrequited love affair with the Clinton administration and worried about the culture war being waged by religious conservatives. By the end of the decade, the same people were dealing with their unrequited love affair with the Obama administration and, well, you know where this is going. Still, the decade was not without its highlights – we’ve still come a long, long way since 2000. So, on to the gayest moments of the Aughts!

Nikki Finke is reporting that Lauren Zalaznick, the President of NBC Universal’s Women and Lifestyle Entertainment Networks, is in “advanced talks” to take over as MTV President of Entertainment, a job recently vacated by departing Brian Graden. If true, why would she leave the string of successes at Bravo to go to the flailing catastrophe that is now MTV Networks? Perhaps because, right now, Bravo couldn’t get be any hotter, and MTV is nearly at rock bottom. A perfect opportunity to add to Zalaznick’s nearly legendary track record.

There were several disappointments at Thursday’s Crasher-gate hearing, but chief among them were Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan‘s continued insistence that the now-famous security breach posed no threat to the President, and the committee’s focus on Social Secretary Desiree Rogers‘ role in said breach. This is absurd on two counts.

During House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on Crashergate, the Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan spent the morning on the hot seat for his agency’s failure to repel uninvited guests Michaele and Tareq Salahi from last Tuesday’s White House state dinner. Among the revelations this morning is the embarrassing fact that, according to Sullivan, the Secret Service learned of the breach on Facebook.

As a Congressional hearing gets underway to drill down on how the uninvited Salahi couple managed to breach White House security, the White House has removed any and all doubt as to whether the Secret Service might have had a legitimate excuse for letting the couple past the first checkpoint.

The saga of would-be reality stars and accused White House Party Crashers Michaele and Tareq Salahi continues to unroll slowly, as NBC fortuitously scores scoop after scoop. The latest: The Salahis’ attorney provided The Today Show with copies of their emails with Defense Department White House Liaison Michele Jones. If this is the bombshell evidence they promised to bring Matt Lauer in their meager Today interview Monday, they’re in trouble. These emails are all smoke, no gun

At the heart of the story of Michaele and Tareq Salahi’s big adventure at last week’s state dinner is a security breach so unbelievable, I actually don’t believe it. However, the President would do well to heed the alarm being sounded by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and “In the President’s Secret Service” author Ronald Kessler in this clip from yesterday’s “Today Show.” King calls Obama our “most threatened President ever,” and Kessler says “it’s only a matter of time before there’s an assassination.”

Now that the Salahis have broken their silence and told Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today show, essentially, stay tuned for more, the question is: why did they change their mind after first agreeing to appear on Larry King Live?

Gawker thinks they have the answer – that it was part of their Bravo contract – but Bravo is denying it.

Looking back over the last few days at the events surrounding Tareq and Michaele Salahi — the Virginian couple who crashed last week’s White House state dinner — it’s hard not to wonder whether we haven’t just witnessed the invention of some brand new type of reality game show: extreme reality. Unlike Balloon Boy all signs point to the Salahis wanting to be caught. Now they get to tell their story to the Secret Service.

The latest development in the saga of the polo-playing, dove-throwing socialites who crashed the first state dinner of the Obama administration is something that we suggested yesterday: Michaele and Tareq Salahi may have had help from the inside.

How does a pair of socialite reality-show wannabes crash their way into the most exclusive event in the nation — in the same room as senators, celebrities, and the President? Tareq and Michaele Salahi somehow managed to brazen their way past the Secret Service and into the White House without a hitch, leaving the news to break on their Facebook page. How did they do it?

It wasn’t a “booty call” like when Anderson Cooper called in last week, but Rep. Barney Frank was a guest on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live last night.

And while he talked about Sen. Ted Kennedy‘s passing, the majority of the time was spent dishing on The Real Houswives and similarly lighter fare.