How Michaele Salahi Is Like Nancy Pelosi

In a country where people have been eating cockroaches to get on reality TV for nearly a decade, Americans seem nonetheless appalled at the fame-seeking antics of Michaele and Tareq Salahi, the couple who crashed the White House state dinner last Tuesday. Part of the outrage is because the Salahis revealed a security breach that could have put the president in danger. But the majority of the disgust is because of the Salahis’ profound sense of undeserved entitlement. Why do they get to take goofy candid photos with heads of state when, as a Washington Post commenter put it [2], “Tareq is just a spoiled brat who lives off his parents, and Michaele came from nothing, and fell for the glamour of this useless bum!!”

The premise here is that reality TV is full of crass fame-hounds, failed models, and actors looking for a cheap career boost. For the likes of them to rub shoulders with the dignified statesman of Washington is just appalling! But, in fact, the gap between the roach-eater and the dignified statesman has been closing for some time. Since the genre’s rise to popularity in the early aughts, being on reality TV has gone from a stigma to a sort of virtue. Respected magazine editors from Elle and Rolling Stone helm their own shows, and Top Chef contestants are James Beard contenders. At the same time, politicians are taking their cues from reality TV, revealing more of their inner lives, reporting on their every move in Twitter and Facebook feeds. Even Tom DeLay gave in, with his semi-disastrous debut on Dancing With the Stars just this year. Why wouldn’t Michaele Salahi think she deserved to hang out with Nancy Pelosi? After all, Salahi has about 2,000 more Facebook fans [3] than the good speaker [4].

The difference between the sort of notoriety held by elected officials and by reality television stars has flattened so completely that two former Real World contestants—Sean Duffy from the fifth season of the Real World in Boston and Kevin Powell from the original season in New York—are considering runs for Congress in 2010. These are more than just frivolous attempts at office, like porn star Mary Carey’s bid for California Governor in 2003. Duffy has an uphill battle to winning a seat in Wisconsin’s 7th District, according to Politics Daily [5], but as a fourth-term district attorney in Ashland County, he is a legitimate candidate. Powell has attempted to unseat incumbent Edolphus Towns unsuccessfully twice before, but he is a well-known writer and activist and enjoys the support of Chris Rock and Gloria Steinem [6].

When Powell appeared on the first season of the Real World in 1992, it was the only show of its kind and had a kind of earnest indie pride. It attempted to raise awareness about important issues—think of the third season in San Francisco, when Pedro Zamora taught America about AIDS. But being on reality TV was still something to be ashamed of —Dave Eggers was pretty sheepish about almost appearing [7] on that San Fran season (he auditioned but didn’t make the final cut, and wrote about it in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius [8]). After that, the genre plummeted into a darkness of fame-seeking and vacuity. There were the cockroach-chompers of Fear Factor, the Heenes and their brethren on Wife Swap, and the desperate singletons of The Bachelor and Bachelorette franchises.

Sometime in the middle of the decade, when Project Runway launched, reality TV started featuring reasonable people, often with actual talent. The shows they appeared on did not require them to abjectly humiliate themselves and helped their careers. In the case of someone like The Hills’ Lauren Conrad, being on reality TV created her career as a professional personality with a multimedia empire of books, fashion, and assorted merchandising. But these reality TV stars weren’t just showing that they could make a great dress out of a trash bag, or that they were the best intern that Teen Vogue ever had. They were showing that they had winning personalities that America wanted to support with its votes and buying dollars, just like … yes, a politician campaigning for office. Even the language of reality TV—lessons learned, moms thanked, futures planned—is indistinguishable from the language of a campaign.

When conservatives wanted to wound Obama during the presidential race, they called him a celebrity, a faker [9]. But he could rebut their claims by reaching out to voters with the personal touch of his Twitter feed, his Facebook Page, or his Web site (no wonder its URL is my.barackobama.com). Authenticity has long been a requirement in American politics, and now technology allows it to happen in real time, regarding the most mundane of events. Nearly 20 percent of senators and more than 50 representatives have frequently updated Twitter feeds with personal information about their families (Rep. John Culberson reports [10]: “My daughter & I helped a neighbor set up her Christmas tree tonight”) interspersed with grandstanding (foreign soldiers don’t deserve constitutional rights, e.g.). Sarah Palin communicates with her flock almost exclusively via Facebook because she wants them to get the real story without mediation from the evil mainstream media (“Still making things up [11]?” Palin asked the AP right before her book was released).

In some ways, reality stars have a leg up in a campaign because they’ve already been packaged for public consumption. When Sean Duffy was on the Real World, he was portrayed as an affable young conservative Republican Midwesterner who aspired to be a lawyer and participated in lumberjack competitions. Throw in a fellow Real World alum for a wife (Rachel Campos from Season 3 in San Francisco) and five kids, and that’s pretty much how Duffy is currently packaging himself in the congressional race for Wisconsin’s 7th District [12].

Kevin Powell was best remembered from his Real World season for getting into heated arguments with fellow castmates about race relations. Since he’s considering his third attempt at the congressional seat in New York’s 10th District—which includes the low income neighborhoods of Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York [13]—his former youthful intensity is not necessarily a detriment. He continues to portray himself as someone who is not afraid to ask the hard questions about multiculturalism, women’s rights, and domestic violence. As Maya Angelou says of Powell in her blurb for his most recent book [14], Open Letters to America [15], “He truly keeps it real.”

This is the new American “real”—a personality who knows how to package himself. In her assessment of the Salahis, the New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley says that the party-crashing couple breached [16] “every safety barrier—and sense of social decorum—for something as mundane and flimsy as media attention.” But the media attention isn’t so fleeting anymore. It seems like some reality alums want something far less ephemeral than a few tabloid covers: They want legitimacy and maybe even a seat of their own.

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