Crashing The Casbah

You know, I used to (up until about a year ago) be known for crashing a block party or two from time to time. I know, I know, so you may ask... "Why Keith, are you talking about a summer block party, two or three days after Thanksgiving?" Well, really, I'm not. I'm just saying that, if there was a hot barbecue-laced party within a blocks of me, it would be nothing for me (and sometimes a friend) to ease our way in, start dancing with a few girls, and talking sports with a few of the guys. And, before you know it, we would be sitting down with a plate of potato salad, ribs, barbecued chicken, baked beans, etc.

I didn't even do it like Tupac and company did in "Poetic Justice." Nooooo! No pretending to be someone's cousin... we just blended into the crowd. One year, I even brought a nice cut of steak and plopped it on someone's grill and struck up a conversation with the owner. Before long, you would've thought I lived on the block. My wife has warned me that one day this is going to catch up with me and maybe it will but, with that said and that story told, perhaps the couple that crashed President Obama's gala dinner last week read some pages from my old playbook!

A Virginia couple, who badly wanted to be on the upcoming Real Housewives of Washington, DC, thought it'd be a good idea to crash the White House State Dinner. Now, all eyes are on the Secret Service and how exactly a couple could successfully do such a thing. As reported from The New York Times: "The inquiry was begun after a Virginia couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, slipped past multiple layers of high-level White House security Tuesday night and managed to rub shoulders, literally, with Vice-President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. and the White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, among others, at Washington’s most exclusive social event this year.

Edwin M. Donovan, a spokesman for the Secret Service who spent his Thanksgiving Day dealing with phone calls from reporters, would not discuss the investigation in detail but said the initial focus was on “a Secret Service checkpoint which did not follow proper procedure to ensure these two individuals were on the invited guest list.” (I'll bet this agent had just settled down to a nice plate of hot food and was watching the Sixers lose to whoever they were playing that night. Since they've lost five straight, just who they were playing really doesn't matter.)

Representative Peter T. King, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, called for a Congressional investigation, saying in an interview that he was shocked at the lack of security at the White House. Since 2003, the Secret Service has been part of the Department of Homeland Security. Isn't that like locking the barn door after the horses have run out?

From the photos I saw, President and Mrs. Obama seemed to be good sports about the whole thing. It struck me both as funny for a moment and then kinda scary. It is one thing for me and a willing, hungry co-conspirator to slip into a neighborhood block party. First off, there is no "security" to speak of and it's a whole different thing when someone sneaks up on the President of the United States's dinner party that is supposed to have the best security. You can believe that heads are going to roll and that maybe one or two Secret Service agents are going to be at the unemployment office in a few days or applying for a private detective's license or whatever out-of-work federal operatives do whenever they find themselves out of a job.

One good thing about this entire incident is this... at least this couple didn't take their shoes off and hurl them at the president. That would have really been nuts!