By now everybody knows that a couple of fame-whore douchebags crashed President Obama’s first state dinner at the White House. It was certainly a failure on the part of the Secret Service and those agents responsible need to have their heads put on sticks as a warning to others. But the amount of time this story has been in the news and the vitriol with which it has been reported makes me think that there’s more to it than meets the eye. After all, this is hardly the first time this has happened. White House security has been breached 91 times in the past 30 years, including one clown who did it three times.

Bryan Ferry “It’s My Party” (Lesley Gore)
Washington is a notoriously insular place. Politicians, lobbyists, reporters and socialites all exist in a big clubby experiment in social darwinism. Everybody is expected to know their place and to stay there. And that’s the great crime of the party crashers. It was the elite’s party and they invaded the turf of the elite and for that they must pay.

Eldissa “Fame” (Irene Cara)
It’s obviously all about fame for these two nimrods. They thought this stunt would get them on a reality TV show. As though that’s a worthwhile goal. And now some congresscritters want to force them to testify before Congress, which would be like throwing Br’er Rabbit into the briar patch. Andy Warhol’s epigram seems so trite and innocent now. These days the problem’s not that everybody is famous for fifteen minutes but that a media environment has emerged that encourages fame-whoring so all those digital cable channels and blogs have content to deliver to the rest of us who are still trying to become famous for fifteen minutes.

Camper Van Beethoven “Photograph” (Ringo Starr)
The whole thing might have been swept under the rug if not for the photographs. If the party crashers had just eaten dinner and done the receiving line it wouldn’t have been such a big deal. They could have even taken photos with famous people if they had just hung the photos in their home. But they had to go and post them on Facebook and at that point they couldn’t be ignored any longer.

Thin White Rope “Town Without Pity” (Gene Pitney)
I don’t know if there was a physical velvet rope that those doofuses talked their way past. Maybe it was a thin white rope. We’ll probably never know.

Stretch Arm Strong “Get The Party Started” (Pink)
I think that the party would have gotten started just fine without them.