Distracted by all the glamour

I really don’t understand why anyone would want to “crash” a party. Why go somewhere you are not wanted? This crash is not to be confused with the one in Florida that involved getting away from somewhere you did not want to be.

Is it reasonable to assume that you were indeed invited but it just slipped someone’s mind? Or, “once I am there they will be so happy that I arrived.” That logic is overly self-serving and borders on egomania. But, you have to have a major ego to push your way into a closed event.

Shades of Hyacinth Bucket. (That is pronounced Boo-kay, as in the collection of periwinkles.)

The news is full of the couple who crashed the Obama’s State Dinner for the Prime Minister of India. People are pointing fingers and I hear that there is even a congressional investigation to probe into how this happened. We could save some time and concentrate on more important things by just admitting: “Somebody got distracted!” Actually, it appears several somebodies! And for congress, the distraction continues.

I am reminded of Mother’s First Rule of Etiquette: Never arrive uninvited to someone’s home at the dinner hour! Did they expect their place card to magically appear just because you are wearing “off the rack” from Saris R Us and a “too-tight” tux?

A descendant of Henry Morgenthau Jr. (FDR era), wrote a great piece in the NY Times about some gate-crashing teenagers who were able to get into the White House on New Year’s Eve back in 1938. They did this on a bet and hoped to get the autographs for Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Their escapade was able to be played out because they were mistaken for guests who had been invited. The doorkeepers had been told to expect a group of young people. It was a coincidence that another group of teenagers opted to “crash” on the same evening.

The gatekeepers of 2009 were told to expect 300 or so people, some of them blond, I suppose.

The article in the Times sums up the events of 1938 by quoting from Eleanor Roosevelt who mentioned the incident in her column, “My Day.” According to this source, Mrs. Roosevelt couched the “crash” in descriptive terms such as “intrusive, unmannerly, rude, thoughtless and unmindful of others.” I was particularly taken by one comment that was quoted from her column. “Behavior of this kind will make the young people seem heroic.”

People have been pushing their way into private spaces for generations. Some are so intent on going where they are not wanted that courts must issue a restraining order to keep them away. But isn’t a printed “guest list” a type of “restraining order?”

Many years ago, my purple-haired mother down in Alabama phoned, quite upset with the fact that some people had arrived at her home, “totally unannounced.” I asked who these people were. “Some people we met at church,” my mother replied.

“I bet when you met them you said, ‘Come to see us some time.’”

“Of course I did, but you know, we don’t mean that!”