Aftershocks
It's over? The Salahis gate-crashing troubles put a second season of RealHousewives of D.C. in serious doubt
There are other D.C. Housewives sure, but Michaele Salahi is the one who bringsthe drama.
Some photos continue to haunt. The Salahis unauthorized encounter with Obamacould keep them off any future reality TV.
What would the show be left with sans Salahis? A closet war between a lazytwentysomething and her uptight mother ...
November 24, 2009: A day that will live in infamy.
Maybe that day doesn’t ring any bells. But for Tareq and Michaele Salahi, it was either the end of life as they know it or the beginning of the best PR stunt of the new millennium.
The Real Housewives of D.C. went docudrama for its season finale, with dates and recaps, crosscuts to news footage, and portentous music. That’s right, readers, we’re back to the White House party-crashing that made news months before the show aired and long before anyone knew the ill-fated social climbers would be a weekly feature on Bravo.
We’ve been waiting for answers all season. The main question is, “When does delusion turn into psychosis?”
Sure, we chuckled when Michaele thought she and hubby Tareq could improve international relations through polo. We wondered about all this talk of their family winery, since it seemed always empty and shuttered. And we want to know one simple thing: Where do the Salahis live?
We’ve only ever seen them in hotel rooms. There’s so much talk about bankruptcy and foreclosure, we can only assume they’ve lapsed into high-class vagabondage, the Great Gatsbys of 21st century suburban Virginia.
The crashing of President Obama’s first State dinner made international news, so none of the events were a surprise. But it was still surreal to see the Salahis worm their way in to the White House.
Tareq’s slick charm, a bit of bravado, and Michaele’s sparkly sari were all it took to breeze past a confused official at the gate. If you crashed a party secured by the Secret Service, would you snap photos with Joe Biden and Rahm Emanuel? Would you post them on Facebook when you got home? Don’t answer that — unless you’ve got a good lawyer. In that case, you won’t have to answer at all.
Clearly, the Salahis did have a good lawyer. The two appeared like dolled-up drones at Congressional hearings aired on CSPAN. For once, they kept their mouths shut.
When questioned, Tareq and Michaele both sang on cue like birds that didn’t want to be caged.
“On the advice of counsel,” Tareq said over and over, “I respectfully assert my right to remain silent and decline to answer your question.” Representative Dan Lungren summed it up best: “The Constitution protects fools.”
And after the hearings, their lawyer really earned his fee by playing a canny blame game. He shifted the buck to the only entity more bloated and foolhardy that these two: the United States government.
Meanwhile, the other D.C. Housewives were haughty, indignant, and partly resentful, as if they both disapproved and envied the couple. We have little sympathy as they gloat over the Salahi’s social faux pas. Yes, none of others is stupid enough to crash a State Dinner at The White House.
But didn’t any of them have the good sense to figure out that Michaele and Tareq were the most obvious damaged goods in D.C.? Shouldn’t they have stayed away from the pair from the get-go? And didn’t Stacie wonder what was up when they told her they had an invite to the White House? Who wouldn’t have asked to see the invitation?
Stacie and Mary go to Lynda’s apartment for a postmortem. Of course the wine flows freely as they toast “damage control at The White House and hopefully for everyone involved.”
In the latter part of that phrase, they mean themselves. If we’ve learned one thing from all of the Housewives, it’s how to think first of yourself. You should always worry about what your friends are doing because it could damage your reputation. Cat is the first to suffer the consequences. Her White House Christmas party invitation gets cancelled because of her association with Michaele and Tareq.
All right, it’s unfortunate, but she’s not suffering in any material fashion, and she’s the one who signed on as a Housewife. Last we heard, nobody was holding a gun to her head.
Reality checks are the mainstay of Aftershocks, and we still want to know how Cat even got on the show. Her husband is an official White House photographer. Wasn’t it considered a security threat for Bravo to be following his wife around town?
Mary calls the Salahis “Thelma and Louise with the gas pedal pushed,” but we think she’s just jealous. The most exciting thing that happens in her monochromatic home is the occasional closet break-in by her slacker daughter Lolly. Lynda thinks the news is a great thing, since it will create so much press around the couple’s financial troubles and vineyard bankruptcy.
Would these women like to star in a D.C. community theater production of Macbeth?
The stunning Paul Wharton, who serves as official gay to this coven, is the only one who dares put them in their place. “It’s easy for all of you to sit there in your designer shoes and say what Michaele should do,” he admonishes.
His take is that Tareq ruined Michaele, and that saying she should just get an honest job is easier said than done.
“Lynda married well,” he explains in a video diary. “She sure didn’t make millions off her modeling agency.”
Bravo, Paul. When will Bravo wake up and give you your own show? We’d rather watch you style celebrities than the whining Rachel Zoe. We bet you’d treat your husband better — assuming Stacie and Jason ever allow you to marry him.
Speaking of the upright Stacie and Jason, even they fail to bring the Salahis back to earth. A post-New Year dinner ends abruptly as the Salahis scurry like moles out the back door to avoid Cat, who lies in wait for them on the front stoop.
If we’ve learned anything watching far too many episodes of The Real Housewives, it’s that psychosis sells, but legal troubles don’t. Could there really be a second season in D.C. if the socially-outcast Salahis won’t come out to play?
Don’t worry, Bravo. You can always offer Michelle Obama a contract.
