THE FRENZY ABOUT WHITE HOUSE GATECRASHERS:
DID THE MEDIA OVERREACT?
Should the Salahis be boiled in oil, mercilessly flogged or has the media made it much more than it really was?
After hearing about Tareq and Michaele Salahi, the brazen pair who
crashed the White House State Dinner, I was alternately intrigued and
worried, especially the way the media reported it. In particular CNN, where Tom Foreman and Erica Hill, subbing for
Anderson Cooper, kept harping at how horrible it was and that national
security was clearly at stake.
Please, this is much ado about -- not exactly nothing, but not
nearly as much as they were screaming about. And I say this as one who
adores Erica Hill, in particular her eyebrow raised banter with
Anderson Cooper. But I guess when she's actually hosting the show,
she's determined at all costs to prove she's a serious journalist.
Okay, but when she ominously suggests what these folks did might get
them into prison, fueled by Bush Homeland Security Advisor Frances
Fragos Townsend, who said it was a federal offense to lie to a federal
officer, I have to say, enough! Let's put it all into perspective, not
to mention why Ms. Townsend wasn't outraged about the lies told to
federal officials in the Bush administration concerning the so-called
weapons of mass destruction that got us into a seemingly endless and
deadly war in Iraq.
So, what did these masqueraders do that was so different from the
Streaker who got into the Academy Awards or any other famed gate
crasher of recent memory? Yes, it was the White House, but it's not as
if they were found in the residential quarters hiding under the
president's bed. Indeed, some of you may remember the unwelcome guest
Queen Elizabeth woke up to in her Buckingham Palace bedroom in 1982.
That was a national security breach. What happened at the State Dinner
pales in comparison.
Did the Secret Service err? Absolutely. Was the president in
apparent danger, absolutely not. No more than when he steps out of the
White House and attends a county fair or similar dinners held in grand
hotels.
The Salahis somehow talked their way through the initial entrance
point, then went through metal detectors, as did all the guests. Some
have said, "But they could have picked up a knife from a table." So
could any of the other guests, and just because the others were
"cleared" through social security cards and the like, were they all so
well-known that they couldn't have been part of some sleeper cells
living in America for years?
But someone might say, "When Michaela Salahi shook hands with the
president, she could have kissed him with her poison lipstick," as if
straight out of a James Bond thriller. And so could anyone on a
receiving line at any of the hundreds of events the president attends
during the year, where people are not screened in advance. He always
has secret service bodyguard protection around him and certainly did at
this reception. But it's impossible to totally protect the president
from all situations, so it's silly to get hysterical about this
happenstance, except to wonder how the uninvited got to mingle with the
elites, who'd gotten official nods.
Are there background checks for the kids and parents who come onto
the White House lawn for the Easter Egg Roll each year? The president
and his family mingle with them as well. Not to mention the many, many
tourists who visit the White House daily, whether the president is
there or not. While there, they are watched. They do not have free rein
of the mansion. Just as the Salahis and the other State Dinner guests
(including the Indian Prime Minister and his wife) could not have
walked anywhere they wanted and taken the elevator to the family
residence.
I think there's amazement at what the Salahis did, and the Secret
Service should take note, but what the Salahis accomplished didn't make
Obama particularly unsafe if the basic protections surrounding the
immediate area of the president are in place.
Crashing a party, even at The White House, does not rise to the
level of a federal crime, so much as indicate dismay that the officials
in charge were not able to keep the riff raff out. I'm not pooh-poohing
the necessity to keep all of our First Families and thus the well being
of our nation secure. However, I'm saying what the Salahis did was a
rather remarkable achievement, but no more a cause for alarm than if
they had achieved the same result at a dinner attended by President
Obama at the Waldorf-Astoria.
I also find it intriguing that there were many who were willing to
give the Balloon Family a pass, in particular the often smug Jeffrey
Toobin, also of CNN, who essentially said that, while it was wrong,
nothing horrible had been done.
No? In that instance, not only were millions of Americans gripped in
terror worrying about a little boy's safety, but more significantly the
Heenes had launched an aeronautical object that could have wreaked
havoc on an airplane or caused severe damage to electrical or telephone
wires. And don't forget thousands who combed the areas searching for
the balloon and the supposedly lost boy, including professional safety
people who might have been used elsewhere for a true emergency, which
fortunately never occurred.
The Media, be they Brian Williams on NBC, Katie Couric on CBS, Diane
Sawyer on ABC, or the cable outlets Fox News, MSNBC and the The New York Times and The Washington Post
in their bid for competitive ad dollars, seem content to make news out
of news that is only partially so. Or blow things out of proportion
such as in the Michael Jackson non-stop coverage or Octomom. To suggest
that the Salahis go to federal prison is nonsense. They should be
thanked for exposing some flaws in the Secret Service System, though
the flaws themselves led to no real danger to the president, and isn't
that the real story?
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