I am still worried about the Salahis. A few days ago it was the issue of decorum, which they do not seem to have in abundance. Today, amid protests of good manners that would never have allowed them to intrude where the uninvited fear to tread, there is concern for their grammar and syntax. For a couple who are clearly headed towards a book deal, grammar may no longer matter but discombobulated syntax can cut into book-signing audiences.
As Kathleen Hennessey and Mark Silva report in today’s Chicago Tribune,
The couple who made it past Secret Service security to hobnob with the president at a state dinner last week say “the truth will come out” about their night at the White House and insist they’re not party crashers.
The couple said in an interview on NBC‘s “Today” that they were “shocked and devastated” by accusations that they showed up uninvited and talked their way past security. They said they were cooperating with a Secret Service investigation and claimed they had evidence showing they had permission to attend the A-list affair.
An e-mail exchange with Pentagon official Michele Jones will, insist the decorous couple — certainly people who invite the TV cameras in to watch their dressings-up can’t be utterly without taste — completely exonerate them.
The Salahis wrote that they drove to the White House the night of the dinner “to just check in, in case it got approved since we didn’t know, and our name was indeed on the list!” The Secret Service has said they were not on that list and that it erred by letting them in.
“We were invited, not crashers,” Michaele Salahi said in the “Today” interview. “There isn’t anyone who would have the audacity or the poor behavior to do that. No one would do that and certainly not us.”
So far be it from this space to insinuate that they are guilty of poor behavior. But there is still room for concern about their facility with the English language:
Tareq Salahi said he and his wife have been “very candid” with the Secret Service and “have turned over documentation to them. … We’re going to definitely work with the Secret Service between Michaele and I to really shed light on this.”
Couple say they didn’t crash White House dinner — chicagotribune.com.
