Anyone who disagrees that the news isn’t a form of entertainment should try flipping the channel to CNN sometime.
The latest eccentricity within the pages of your daily newspaper is the story of Tareq and Michaele Salahi. What one couple saw as a chance to climb a few rungs up the social ladder was conversely considered a White House security nightmare.
Bravo television has recently released its plans to turn out another cycle of its popular TV series ” The Real Housewives.” On previous seasons, tensions run high for trivial reasons, regardless of how difficult it is to read their botox-injected faces. National Public Radio appropriately deems the show, “Theater of the Insignificant,” yet this “guilty pleasure” has ratings sky-rocketing. The newest season is expected to follow the glamorous lives of Washington D.C.’s socialites.
Of course it’s nice to whisk yourself away to a place where luxury is at its finest and almost little to no brain activity is involved. But there must be a line drawn between what is entertaining behavior and what is completely unacceptable. The Salahis were in the pool of socialites that would potentially be featured on the next season of “The Real Housewives,” but now they have a much larger issue at hand.
The question on everyone’s mind is whether or not the couple was actually invited to President Barack Obama’s White House dinner honoring Indian president Manmohan Singh. Tareq Salahi thinks he was, but when interviewed, his answer to the question was a little more than vague. Various e-mails have claimed to assist in shedding the mystery of how the two got through numerous levels of security without presenting any form of invitation.
Presently, the Salahis are likely to come out of the situation fully acquitted and further proof of their blamelessness is expected to surface soon. If that’s the case though, why does it seem like they’re trying too hard to substantiate something that could have been proved simply?
Ultimately, the White House must make sense of the whole situation and re-evaluate the dispensation of their security efforts. Luckily, it was only a group of sycophants and not anyone wishing to harm the president this time. What the White House must do now is prevent any possibility of a “next” time.
Judith Schomp is a freshman political science major from Lindale.
