Big Sole Blog (BSB)

In the video above, CNN's Jake Tapper interviews Shonda Rhimes, the creator of ABC's hit show Scandal and the long-running Grey's Anatomy. Rhimes talks about what drew her to Judy Smith's life. Smith is the real woman whose work as a crisis manager inspired Scandal. Rhimes also discusses with Tapper that the show is the first show in 40 years to feature a black woman as the lead character.

On Friday, January 18, Judy Smith talked to CNN about two media crises troubling the lives of two very different sports celebrities: Lance Armstrong's doping scandal and Manti Te'o's bizarre case of the fantasy girlfriend. As I've written before, Smith is the real-life crisis manager on whom Shonda Rhimes based ABC's hit show Scandal, which stars Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope (the character

Real-life "Olivia Pope" inspiration, Judy Smith, has been hired by Jill Kelley of the Petraeus fiasco, reports AdAge. I came across this tidbit while reading Margaret Colson's column at Bloomberg in which she discusses the differences between how the media treats women during such media spectacles and how the media treats men. Of Kelley hiring Smith, Colson observes that both Kelley and Paula

I love Scandal, Shonda Rhime's hot, new drama on ABC, but I had no idea that it is based on a real black woman, Washington DC fixer (crisis manager) Judy Smith. In the video below, Smith says, "To be a crisis manager you have to be very calm." When clients come to her, they are already in the middle of a crisis and nervous. It would not help for her to be nervous and jumpy as well. She also says