Yes, the Salahis infiltration into the White House’s recent state dinner in honor India’s prime minister poses serious questions about the security apparatus surrounding a president who is in more need of protection than any president before him. However, I don’t want to focus on that aspect of this story. The Salahi’s misconduct, as well as their behavior in the days following the dinner, is a sad indication of the state of American culture at the close of the decade.

It is now known that Mr. and Mrs. Salahi, two wannabe socialites from Virginia, were shadowed to the gates of the White House by a camera crew filming for a new reality show, “The Real Housewives of D.C.”, and that the entire affair could have been an attempt to impress a potential audience with their popularity. One can only ask, What were these people thinking? What was going on in their heads when they decided that it was fine to trespass on federal property for the sake of television?

Their idiocy is an example of what happens when a brain-dead culture obsessed with capturing a distorted “reality” collides with real life. It is a case of the quest for easy fame slamming up against a world in which people have very different concerns. The funny part is that the Salahi’s don’t seem to realize that they aren’t playing around in their fantasy world anymore. According to some sources, they are seeking to benefit financially from this episode – they canceled an appearance on Larry King Live after they were refused compensation for it. Mrs. Salahi has bragged on her Facebook that she is ready to co-host the Today Show. What’s worse, the news media has taken up this story with enthusiasm, giving the Salahi’s their fifteen minutes of fame and gratifying their inane aspirations.

The border between real life and the fame-crazed world of reality television has been blurred beyond recognition, as people go to increasingly outrageous lengths to craft an image for the media and sell it as actuality. The idea that this obsession with false reality has stretched all the way to top of America’s power structure indicates that Americans are lost in a fantasy world. Even worse, we seem content to consume this garbage without reflecting critically on what it says about our collective mindset.

One thing is for certain – when people like the Salahis begin to share the same space as the president of the United States, something is seriously wrong.