Party Crashers Make Desirée Rogers Look Bad

Is White House social secretary to blame for Michaele and Tareq Salahi?
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 2, 2009 8:09 AM CST
Party Crashers Make Desirée Rogers Look Bad
White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers at a dinner hosted by President Obama, Sunday, Feb. 22, 2009 in Washington.   (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

A week’s worth of finger-pointing over how Michaele and Tareq Salahi managed to crash a state dinner has now turned the spotlight on a controversial figure: White House social secretary Desirée Rogers. Unlike demure secretaries before her, the attention-grabbing Rogers “arrived in Washington this year to great fanfare, no small amount of it of her own making,” writes Robin Givhan in the Washington Post—but the dinner ended up “tarnishing her vaunted reputation as an overachieving perfectionist.”

Rather than simply working the event, Rogers was on the official guest list, seated “at the most exclusive dinner in town,” Givhan points out. She’s been a high-society mover and shaker since her Chicago days, when she first met the Obamas, but that relationship could be causing her some internal issues now: In the past, “the Obamas were the nice couple from the South Side. She was a cut above. And now she has a job in which she is expected to serve at their pleasure.”
(More Desiree Rogers stories.)

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