Unbelievably, we now have a worse example of egocentric self promotion than Balloon Boy's parents. Every component of the story is over the top: the drop dead gorgeous blond wife who spent seven hours in a salon prepping for a night out; the press spokesman who provides quotable quotes that skate the truth; the sheer chutzpah- or idiocy?- of crashing a White House dinner and the amazing fact that they pulled it off. Fifteen minutes of fame is fourteen minutes and fifty- nine seconds too long for people like this.
The Salahis' meeting with President Obama reminds me of both Michael Fagan, (who breached security at Buckingham Palace in 1982 for a ten minute conversation with Queen Elizabeth 2 in her bedroom), and German teenager Matthais Rust, who eluded Russian air defenses to land his plane in Red Square in 1987. How on God's green earth do these things happen? Successfuly crashing a State dinner seems just one more bit of evidence that the grown ups- or as Peggy Noonan more diplomatically puts it , the wise men and women- are not in charge anymore.
Noonan thinks that the pictures of Obama bowing are becoming iconic. I'd argue for the photo above.
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