COMMENTARY | In news I couldn’t have made up if I tried, White House gatecrasher Michaele Salahi ran off with a guitarist from the band Journey Wednesday. For hours, her husband, Tareq Salahi, believed she had been abducted; eventually she let him know that she had gone willingly.
Michaele, better known for getting into a White House function without an invitation than her tenure on the canceled “Real Housewives of D.C.,” has taken childhood regression even further than one might have thought feasible. When you hear someone has run away with a rock star, you’d probably think of someone in her late teens, early 20s, making a break from her tyrannical father in the pursuit of foolish young love. Maybe the girl couldn’t help it.
Michaele is reportedly 45 years old.
The man she ran away from is her husband Tareq Salahi. Her rock star, Neil Schon, is 57.
Perhaps Bravo TV, the home of the “Real Housewives” franchise, selects emotionally volatile people as they make for good TV. Perhaps the people who want to be on those particular reality shows have something off-balance to begin with. I doubt the show itself unhinges people, as the Salahis attended the White House event before their show ever aired.
But the format of the show makes it so easy to forget we are watching people, not characters or actors. Even with the runaway middle-aged-wife, it’s hard to remember she left an actual marriage, not a prop husband, to go on the road with a guitarist in a band that saw its highest days in the ’80s.
All my images of the event are colored in the grainy film of a music video from that era, when the cutting-edge technology included using multicolored lights on the stage. I see her in the dark wings, with a bandana around her forehead, screaming as Journey performs to an audience of nostalgics and fans of “Glee,” most of whom are probably there ironically.
But Michaele is not a child and, as an adult, there are real-world implications for her actions. I’d assume. I’m not actually sure what her life entails, but impetuous actions always have consequences, don’t they?
Meanwhile, while she and her new beau may be taking the midnight train going anywhere, Tareq’s attorney says that any talk of divorce is premature, according to CBS/AP.
Don’t stop believing, Tareq. Don’t stop believing.