Do the Clowns and Cut-Ups Win?

Walking through the White House's East Gate uninvited may not be as bad as climbing over the fence, but even if what Michaele and Tareq Salahi did by inviting themselves into last week's state dinner turns out to be legal, here's my question: When did our societal standards dip so low that anything on the right side of the law is OK? Doesn't it matter any more that what the Virginia socialites did is distasteful, as Judy Howard Ellis has written? Or mean-spirited?

Apparently not. Because while the professional poseurs reportedly shop their story to the highest bidder, their caper will have serious consequences -- even if not for them. Secret Service agents will no doubt lose jobs. Barack Obama's White House has been embarrassed -- not by politics but by a couple of alleged party crashers. And worst, the nation's attention is riveted by a sideshow when the drama of our time is what happens to our troops in Afghanistan. That, folks, is as real as reality TV gets. About the only good thing to come of the experience is that White House security will tighten up a few notches.

When I found myself at a post-Thanksgiving dinner with a psychiatrist and asked what she thought lay behind the Salahis' exploits, she called it a classic case of narcissism. The difference is that before reality TV, narcissists were the people we hoped not to be seated next to at the Thanksgiving table. Now, thanks to the democratization of technology otherwise known as reality TV, all of us, in effect, sat next to the Salahis. They certainly dominated the conversation at our holiday gathering -- and beyond.

In the end, the poet who came to dinner said it best, as poets often do: "We have reached the end of shame in our culture." Whereas the possibility of being publicly humiliated went a long way to check people's bad impulses back in the day, now the more outlandish a person's behavior, the bigger celebrity he or she has the chance of becoming.

It's impractical for us to go back to the public stockade. Remember how when we were in school and the teacher yelled not just at the class cut-ups but anyone who laughed at them? That's us.