The White House Gate Crashers
A little more than a month after the "balloon boy" debacle, America witnessed the equally shameless fame-seeking stunt of Tareq and Michaele Salahi, a pair of Virginia socialites now known as the Gate Crashers. On Nov. 24, the duo strolled into a White House state dinner — sans invitation — to rub elbows with the likes of President Obama, Vice President Biden and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and later triumphantly posted photos of their coup on Facebook. The Salahis briefly basked in the widespread media coverage of the White House security breach. They started out calmly insisting that they had been invited, before revealing their ulterior motive: reality TV! That's right — they were just gunning for a role on Bravo's forthcoming reality series The Real Housewives of D.C. (Such outlandish social capers appear to be a pastime for the Salahis, who reportedly crashed an awards dinner for the Congressional Black Caucus in September by entering through a door used by servers and busboys. They were later escorted off the premises.) While the Secret Service is investigating the rule-breaking, the guard who mistakenly waved them in explained that he had been duped by the couple's "manner and insistence as well as the pressure of keeping lines moving on a rainy evening," according to the Washington Post.