White House Uninvited-Visitors-Gate: They Just Don't Make Contrived Scandals Like They Used to

What story could better encapsulate our culture: a couple of loser reality-TV wannabes get into a White House event without an invite, the corporate media offer breathless coverage of the non-event for 3 news cycles, and right-wing bloggers and talk-radio jabberers say the whole thing only proves that Obama's the anti-Christ.

Let's play Sanity Versus Madness. And let's take the latter first. As is often the case, I go to intrepid wingnuttologist Roy Edroso for help plumbing the depths of online "conservatism," this time via his excellent Village Voice column:

While the legacy media chronicled the Salahis' attempts to wring money out of their now-famous stunt and get on a reality show, and Mrs. Salahi's cheerleader fantasies, the more adventuresome rightbloggers pursued a new angle: Obama's "five year relationship" with the Salahis.

By this, they meant that Obama had been photographed with the Salahis at an MTV Rock The Vote event in 2005, which proves they have the sort of close relationship with the President enjoyed by everyone who has ever been photographed with him. (Also in attendance at the event: John McCain and the Black-Eyed Peas. The conspiracy is more vast than you can imagine!)

But that has never been the sort of thing that stops rightbloggers. "They actually knew Obama five years ago," said Right Truth. "BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA AND TAREQ SALAHI GO WAY BACK," said Reliapundit. "So-called 'party crashers' of Obama's dinner have known Obama for years," said Jacksonian Lawyer's Blog, etc.

[...]

Eventually, as is customary with these guys, speculation grew darker.

"As far as I'm concerned, this 'incident' fits right in with the plans of the Muslim Brotherhood.," said JewPI. "Yes, I think it's a conspiracy, and not only that. It's a conspiracy decades in the making of which Americans are dangerously unaware."

"That Settles It... Obama Is In Fact A Jihadist," said Snooper's Take Our Country Back. "Remember. Obama is in fact a Jihadi scum bag."

"With Barack Obama, it's always about the radicalism," bold-faced Gateway Pundit. "Always."

Now hold all that crazy up against this hard little nugget of sanity, courtesy of John Cole:

People are aware that the only thing that happened in the breach is that they were not officially invited, right? You all are aware out there that they went through intense screening on-site, went through metal detectors and everything else, and there was no chance they had a weapon on them. You are aware that if one of them had, as Peter King suggested, “grabbed a knife off a table” and lunged for POTUS, they would have been tackled by any one of the thousands of security personnel there. You are aware that they were through far more security screening than it takes to get on an airplane, and tons more than any of the hundreds of thousands of people who shook hands with Obama the last year on rope lines?

In short, you are aware that the only thing that was missing was their name on an official invite list, and it is looking like they were helped out by an Indian dignitary.

Stop acting like Osama bin Laden crashed the damned dinner with a MOAB under his trenchcoat. If this gets the Secret Service more money and resources, great, but no one was in danger and this is really just silly.

Yes.