Photo by KimTheWolfI mentioned the news in the afternoon roundup on Monday, but enough of you have sent me notes about it that I will give it its due: Washington gatecrasher Michaele Salahi and her husband Tareq will appear on Real Housewives of D.C.. On Monday, Bravo vice president Andy Cohen took to the Huffington Post to defend Bravo’s decision to keep the Salahis in the show, even though the notorious White House State Dinner episode took place during Bravo’s production cycle. Here’s Cohen:
We learned the following day — as did everyone else, including the other D.C. Housewives — of the alleged “gate crashing” incident. At the core of the reaction was the question of whether or not the Salahis had been invited. But one of the by-products of the aftermath was continued false reporting that somehow the Salahis had used the State Dinner as a ‘stunt’ to be cast on the show. The fact is that by November we had been shooting the series with Michaele and the other women for months. In fact, we were a few weeks away from wrapping photography on the series. Any idea that attending the State Dinner was an audition to cement participation in the show is preposterous.
It is the job of the legal system to decide if and how the Salahis may have broken the law. But our decision to include them in the series speaks to a very basic programming mandate, which is to present real people as they exist within their universe.
So Bravo hedges on the illegal bent of the Salahi episode (“alleged ‘gate crashing incident”), then describes them with a word you don’t hear used too often about them: real people.
Just a couple of real people who produced an America’s Polo Cup matchup on Saturday between India and the U.S. and sponsored by Kingfisher Beer — an event that in fact featured neither the participation of the U.S. nor India nor the support of Kingfisher Beer, the Washington Post reports. Two real people, bringing too-real entertainment to 250 people on federal property for just $95 a head! Bravo’s support for the Salahis begins to make sense: Bravo’s in on the cut.
