Salahi-gate: America’s National Embarrassment

For the past week and a half, the media spotlight has been on Washington, DC due to the incident with “White House Party-crashers,” Tareq and Michaele Salahi. More than enough has been said already about their shameless fame-whoring and illegitimacy by the press and the Salahi’s equally fame-hungry associates.  Something however that has not received nearly as much attention is how this incident impacts the image of our country in the eyes of the world.  From the perspective of other countries and governments, America looks like a huge joke.  Two nobodies simply walked into a State Dinner, took groupie-esque photos with politicians and celebrities and nobody raised an eye until AFTER The Washington Post exposed the truth. I’m not a foreign affairs expert, but I know enough about politics and perception to tell you that this looks bad in anyone’s book.  America has a long-standing image abroad for being a country that is reckless, greedy, and unsophisticated.  That negative polarized view of our country was not helped at all by this incident, but instead even more heavily solidified. Adding fuel to the fire is all of the frenzied media coverage about the Salahi’s. Apparently, Americans are more concerned with where Michaele gets her extensions put in than the long-term effects of this fiasco on our national security image.

Yesterday, in an attempt to ease the minds of those concerned with the security issues, President Obama made statements to the press saying that he feels safe in the White House despite the incident and that he “could not have more confidence in the Secret Service.” While that is encouraging to hear in all honesty what else can we expect the man to say? If he had said, “Yeah, I’m sleeping with a pistol under my pillow and one eye open now,” the country would panic and diplomatic relations would be blown to pieces. Even having made that politically correct statement, I’m sure there are some foreign dignitaries scheduled to visit DC who are giving the White House the side-eye and wondering whether or not they’d be more secure in the local Best Western.  After all, when was the last time you heard about a major Hollywood celebrity having the security of their hotel room or VIP appearance breached?  When award shows have tighter security than a State Dinner something is seriously wrong.

And what about the public relations aftermath of all of this? Tareq and Michaele are freely parading through the streets mugging for every camera within a 100-mile radius while NBC Universal, the company that owns Bravo and was filming them for the pending “Real Housewives of Washington, DC”, is supposedly providing them with a chauffer-driven car and footing the bills for their new attorneys.  Footage from the still uncompleted series has already been distributed to the press, I know this for a fact because I was at some of the events where the filming took place and witnessed the cameras and production staging first hand.  You can imagine my surprise when I saw scenes from those events splashed across CNN while I was working out on the elliptical at the gym.  Clearly Tareq and Michaele have no shame, and the executives at NBC are of the same ilk.  In my opinion, it was no coincidence that the couple gave their first interview to the Today Show rather than Larry King. The network is going to make their money while they can from the footage and exposure.  Whether Tareq and Michaele get off free or get prosecuted, the network will profit.  For that I can’t blame them, because that is the nature of the entertainment industry.

Where I aim my criticism and disappointment is with society and the government. Except for understandable interviews with news media, the government should have put a temporary gag order on Tareq and Michaele and NBC until the White House could sort out the details of exactly what happened the night of the dinner.  For those of you about to scream at me about government censorship, keeping this story under the international radar is in our nation’s best interest from a PR standpoint.  There will be plenty of time to sell the rights to a tell-all book and get the back-story on TV. The bigger concern here is how our allies and the countries we’re trying to make allegiances view us in how we handle this kind of breach of national security. As a society we should be demanding discretion publicly with the coverage of this scandal instead of crying out for more details and salacious gossip.  As proud Americans, we should demand better of our leaders and the media in the way they representing us to the world.

As a country we should be up in arms about this. It’s one thing for an entertainment celebrity like Britney Spears to make international headlines for melting down in a salon and shaving her head, it is quite another when two con artists gain entry into what is supposed to be one of the most secure facilities in the world by simply walking up to security and saying “We were invited, we don’t know why we’re not on your list.”  I mean what’s next? Is a pre-school class just going to wander into Fort Knox as part of a field trip? Is the CIA’s next data transmission going to end up on YouTube as a real-time feed?  While those may be extreme examples the point I’m trying to make is that we are standing on the edge of a slippery slope, from a security and public relations point of view. Our country is in a financial crisis, which has affected the world’s economy, and after almost a decade we are still locked in a globally unpopular, and financially draining war.  We can’t afford to make anymore screw ups, especially ones on an elementary level like this one. Thanks to the bungling on part of the Secret Service and lack of common sense from the news outlets, America is once again the laughing stock of the world. Hope you enjoy the taste of egg people because we’re ALL wearing it on our faces now!