The Real Atlanta Housewives? Really?

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Finally caught up to the latest episode of ‘The Real Housewives of Atlanta.’ This version of the show that has previously chronicled the escapades of rich and mostly vacuous ‘housewives’ in Orange County and New York is fascinating because most of these Atlanta ‘housewives’ are in some way attached to professional athletes.

The lead ‘housewife’ in Atlanta is Sheree Whitfield, who used to be married to former NFL player Bob Whitfield, who is from Carson and played at Banning High and Stanford.

Bob is out of the picture and Sheree is a loudly confident fashion designer who throws happening parties but doesn’t always put the names of all her guests on the security list, leading to drama at the front gate of her mansion.

A second ‘housewife’ is DeShawn Snow who is married to NBA player Eric Snow. It is possible Eric was auditioning his wife when he threw her an elaborate wedding vow renewal party in 2007.

DeShawn has the same first name as a couple of other NBA players (DeShawn Stevenson comes immediately to mind). That seems odd. On her website DeShawn says, among other things, ‘I have three beautiful boys, a mansion and amazing cars.’ Those three things, I think, are mandatory to be on any ‘Real Housewives’ show.

A third ‘housewife,’ Lisa Wu-Hartwell, is still married to her sports-related husband, Edgerton Hartwell, who has played for four NFL teams, and was most recently released by the Oakland Raiders.

Wu-Hartwell had previously been married to R&B singer Keith Sweat and apparently Sweat didn’t sign a release allowing the two children he and Wu-Hartwell had together to be on the show. So Wu-Hartwell appears to be a mother of one. It may be the other two children who are the lucky ones.

So far we’ve seen ‘housewives’ changing into skimpy dresses in the parking lots of gas stations, throwing $18,000 birthday parties for their 11-year-old daughters and having dozens of pairs of very expensive shoes brought to the house for personal try-on sessions (OK, this I would love to do).

And there was Sheree’s party, in which NeNe Leakes, a housewife unattached to an athlete, was ‘accidentally’ left off the guest list. NeNe said some bleeped-out bad words and is still not happy two episodes later.

So tune in next week!

-- Diane Pucin