It was Samuel Johnson who, in 1775, coined the phrase "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." They didn't have reality TV back then. Do you remember Thomas Ravenel, the Republican wing nut who was elected Treasurer of South Carolina, the head of Rudy Giuliani's ill-fated South Carolina presidential campaign and the last Tea Party opponent for Lindsey Graham-- all before he was caught selling coke. He's the son of racist former congressman Arthur Ravenel, a Dixiecrat who joined the GOP in the early 1960s and represented the Charleston based first district currently held by Mark Sanford. Now there's a BRAVO! "reality show" debuting next month about Charleston and Tom Ravenel, who's out of prison, is one of the stars. I'm not making this up. Here's the BRAVO! blurb:
New series Southern Charm goes behind the walls of Charleston, South Carolina's most aristocratic families to reveal a world of exclusivity, money and scandal that goes back generations. The fast-paced, drama-filled docu-series follows six Charleston singles, Craig Conover, Cameran Eubanks, Jenna King, Thomas Ravenel, Shepard “Shep” Rose, and Whitney Sudler-Smith, struggling with the constraints of this tight-knit, posh society. The cast, some descendants of Vice Presidents and four-term Senators, and others from "new money," is comprised of Southern bachelors who suffer from "Peter Pan Syndrome" by refusing to settle down; and the women in their lives who challenge them to grow up. Viewers will see them launch political careers, build businesses, break hearts, and chase true love-- all while struggling to preserve their family names. Because in Charleston, you're only as good as your last garden party and one social screw-up can taint generations to come.
Hard to imagine anyone would look at Ravenel's record and refer to it as a "social screw-up." A Citadel graduate, he was fined for finance fraud by the FEC after running for the Senate in 2004. He was forced to resign as State Treasurer after he was caught dealing coke, for which he was sentenced to 10 months in prison, and served 6. This past summer, the 50 year old Ravenel was arrested for "drunk" driving-- high on coke-- in the Hamptons while getting a blow job as he tooled down the Montauk Highway in an SUV.In 2012 he backed Ron Paul for president and now he's reinvented himself as a Libertarian… and still wants to run against Lindsey Graham! But everything depends on how well the polo-playing Ravenel does on Southern Charm now.
"I will bitch slap you in a second," he tells one of the other show members on a rainy night.He also is seen sitting in a doctor's office when he's asked to take a paternity test."I think may need something stronger than the tea here," he says when told someone in the cast is pregnant.
Now this next video-- fascinating… and it tells you everything you'll ever need to know about the delusional, carefully-contructed little world of Thomas Ravenel… and his parasitic class of hereditary Southern gentlemen.