Think of the crudest, most degrading thing a person could be forced into doing. Now, turn it into a competition, sell your idea to a television network, and they’ll not only run with it, but find hundreds of people who would clamor for a chance to perform this task on air. The birth of reality TV has brought about unlimited possibilities for new shows with the discovery that if you give someone a chance to be on national television, they will do just about anything. From guilty pleasure shows like MTV’s “College Life” to VH1’s “For the Love of Ray J,” to NBC’s “Fear Factor,” people are willing to do disgusting, demoralizing or just plain tasteless things to become the next TV star. And apparently this also includes breaching national security to crash a party thrown by the biggest star in the U.S.: President Barack Obama.
The media has pounced on news that on Tuesday night, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, a couple from Virginia, crashed one of the most exclusive parties of the year: Barack Obama’s first state dinner. According to CBS News, the well-dressed couple apparently breezed right through a security force that consisted of Marine guards, the Secret Service and various members of the White House staff without having any credentials or their names on the guest list. The Christian Science Monitor reported that once inside, the couple schmoozed with the elite guests and snapped photos with Joe Biden, Rahm Emanuel and even Obama himself. They then excused themselves before the embarrassing matter of not being on the seating chart for dinner arose and ran home to post the pictures on Facebook. So far, no charges have been pressed against the couple, who crashed the party to increase their chances of being chosen for Bravo’s upcoming show, “The Real Housewives of D.C.”
I have had trouble deciding what part of this news bit is the most disturbing: the fact that White House security allowed such an oversight, or the fact that the couple was willing to risk being arrested just so they could be on a TV show. It is a guarantee that White House security will be tighter in the future to prevent such an embarrassing event from happening again, but reality TV is probably going to continue down its slippery slope. The Salahis are just one example in a million of people doing risky things to get their 15 minutes. Although they are not yet on a TV show, they have achieved their goal. Everyone from Fox News to The New York Times to People to The Christian Science Monitor is doing pieces on the couple, and they were featured on “Larry King Live” on Monday night. This kind of media attention rewards people like the Salahis and makes their desperate attention seeking behavior acceptable. The same thing recently happened with the Heene family of balloon-boy fame and last year with the now infamous Octomom.
We have got to draw the line somewhere. The New York Times has published the sickening statistic that “there may be as many as 1,000 reality participants at any given time” on television. That means that whether you flip on the TV at noon, 3 a.m. or 7 p.m., there are hundreds of people eating vermin, backstabbing each other, drunkenly yelling or making out on national television with the sole intention of obtaining celebrity. The article also states that not a single network goes through a whole week without showing at least two hours of reality TV, and some networks like VH1 and Bravo show it almost exclusively. Unfortunately, they keep airing these shows because, like car wrecks, people can’t help but watch them.
In a chicken or the egg scenario, it is hard to say which came first: the fame-obsessed wannabe reality TV star or the voyeurism of American television audiences. It has become quite clear the two now feed off of each other, but what is unclear is how we can stop people from taking their quest for fame too far. One can only hope that the episode with the Salahis will be a wake-up call for both viewers and network executives alike, showing them perhaps we need to scale back on the reality TV obsession. While having hundreds of people at casting calls for shows like “America’s Next Top Model” and “The Real World” is relatively harmless, the new crop of people who are taking getting noticed into their own hands are a little more dangerous. If you thought giving birth to eight kids without having to pay for it was bad, that pretending your child was gallivanting about in a helium saucer was distasteful, or that breaking into the White House was a little trashy, brace yourself for the future: Things might actually get bad.
Allegra Dimperio ([email protected]) is a freshman intending to major in journalism and theater.
