The Washington Post's Reliable Source blog reported earlier today that the two notorious DC socialites had not been on the official white house guest for last night's state dinner honoring the Indian Prime Minister—but were there anyway! This evening, Reliable Source received official word from the White House: The Salahi's had slipped through a Secret Service checkpoint "which did not follow proper procedure to ensure these two individuals were on the invited guest list." AKA: THEY CRASHED THE FUCK OUT OF THAT PARTY.

But the Secret Service told Reliable Source that the couple did not pose any risk aside from embarrassing everyone by dancing sexy to "Bad Romance":

"Everyone who enters the White House grounds goes through magnetometers and several other levels of screenings," said Ed Donovan, a spokesman for the Secret Service. "That was the case with the state dinner last night. No one was under any risk or threat."

Like most good party crashers, the Salahis flitted around like they owned the place, mugging for the camera with celebs and politicians for pictures Michaele would later upload to her Facebook profile (status update: "Honored to have attended the state dinner at the White House in honor of India with President Obama and our First Lady.")—basically stopping just short of pushing Obama aside to deliver the opening toast themselves, blisteringly drunk, complimenting the Indian prime minister on his "funny hat" before trying to goad the Obamas into a quad-kiss. Here they are with Joe Biden, who you will remember is the vice-president of our nation:

The Salahi's biography is predictable in a sad way: She is a rumored contender for the upcoming DC edition of Bravo's hope-squelching "Real Housewives" series, and defines her style as "classic and feminine with a slim rocker edge. I'm addicted to white clothes, and I love stilettos." He has been embroiled in a complex lawsuit over a family winery and is a polo enthusiast who founded "America's Polo Cup"—which is also being sued for not paying a caterer, according to Reliable Source. Of course these are the people who crash state dinners.

It is pretty ridiculous (and scary) that on this night—Obama's special night!—these two fameballs showed up and successfully used an important geopolitical event as a launching pad for their now inevitable reality show/string of late-night television interviews. But also kind of awesome. Go (to Hell) Salahis!

UPDATE: Commenter Claire Buoyant points us to the Salahis wedding video, which adds about 10,000 pounds to the "sad" side of the Sad/Awesome Scale of Justice.

Dean Meminger is a 62 year-old former New York Knick and dad of Dean Meminger, Jr., a reporter and anchor at NY1. Police found discarded crack pipes at the scene of a fire in the Bronx that put the elder Meminger in critical condition last Sunday, and proceeded to leave 16 families homeless. Meminger has been battling cocaine addiction for much of his adult life, according to the NYDN.

Two's not quite an official trend. But if Pat Kiernan so much as stubs his toe any time soon, we advise everyone at NY1 to flee while you still can.

The AP now report that Bill Sparkman, who was found in September bound and gagged with duct tape in Daniel Boone National Forest, staged the scene to look like a homicide.

Expect to see extensive discussion of this on Fox News, perhaps quoting in a fair and balanced way from articles like this. Which are correct despite today's news.

From the Associated Press:

In an Oct. 30 entry on her blog, Kim wrote she was "mad depressed and overworked," and in another entry said "the more i gain the more lonely it is ... i know i'm like a ghost." The last entry on her blog, dated Nov. 18, was titled "say hi to forever" and carried a video of the song "I Go Deep" by British singer Jim Rivers.

The next day her boyfriend found her dead in her Paris apartment and alerted police. In April this year actress Jang Ja-yeon committed suicide at home and left a seven-page letter describing sexual abuse she had to endure at the hands of those who controlled her career. The Guardian report from the time says that seven other South Korean celebrities had taken their own lives in the six months leading up to Jang's death.

Ahn Jae-hwan, a 36-year-old actor, was reportedly mired in debt. Choi Jin-sil, 39, was worried she had pressured Ahn into suicide. Model Kim Ji-hoo, 23, was harassed on the net after coming out. Singer Lee Seo-hyun, 30, was also under attack on the net over sexuality. Actor Kim Suk-gyun, 30, was said to have been depressed. Transgender actor Jang Chae-won, 26, left a suicide note online.

At the end of May this year the former Prime Minister President of the country, Roh Moo-Hyun leapt to his death from a hill behind his house. He was in the midst of a bribery scandal. His suicide note said:

I am in debt to too many people. Too many people have suffered because of me. And I cannot imagine the suffering they will go through in the future.

South Korea has the 11th highest suicide rate in the world, according to a report from the World Health Organization, based on 2006 figures (via Wikipedia).

Fuchs was reportedly at a party early Sunday morning when the elevator he was in stalled. Newsday reports:

As Fuchs attempted to jump out of the elevator and onto an adjacent floor, the hood of his sweatshirt got caught on a piece of the elevator, causing him to fall five stories to the bottom of the elevator shaft, according to the police report.

Fuchs—who was once in a band with Businessweek media reporter Jon Fine—was a beloved guy in the Williamsburg music scene, and has already inspired eulogies everywhere from Chunklet to the L Magazine to the New York Times.

Besides Williamsburg musicians, the following people in New York wear hoodies: Everybody. Stay safe, everyone.

[Pics: Myspace]

The Washington Post's violent Style section uncovers the catragic case of Hoity, done in by the do-gooding of PETA interns repeatedly knocking on Netzer's door and telling her that keeping her cat outside was dangerous:

For six months, Netzer tried to keep Hoity inside, but he began clawing the furniture, "pooping all over things," and going, as far as Netzer could tell, completely insane. When she would put him out again, some or another intern would stop by again, implying, she says, that Hoity might be happier and safer in a shelter. Afraid that the PETA interns would take her cat, she eventually had him put to sleep.

A PETA spokesman says that the interns had seen the cat "have close calls" with cars in the neighborhood.

Purr-nicious!
[Pic via]

Recap: Dominic Carter was charged with beating his wife last year, he finally went to court last week (his wife said he was innocent, though in an unconvincing manner), then news emerged that he'd tried to name-drop his way out of the charges in court, which caused NY1 to suspend him indefinitely. All the alleged wife-beater wanted to do was get out of the city for a while and go hang out in Kansas City while this whole thing blows over. But no. He accidentally bumped a flight attendant when he bent down to tie his shoelaces, reportedly, which is not tolerated:

The steward took exception to the inadvertent contact and called cops and a ground operator supervisor, officials said.

"That other guy lost it, 'Oh, no! You bumped into me! You will be removed from this flight!' " his aunt, Inez Carter, 63, told The Post.

And then Dominic volunteered to get off the flight and just got on the next flight, because of this zealous flight attendant, and for his troubles he got LOL-ed at in the tabloids, which are both kind of like "You think you had a bad week, check out this guy!" Which is accurate. Not to mention his wife's past year or so.
[Pic via]

Writes the Times of London

At the root of the Swiss Government's initiative is a fear that the cheerful Heidi-and-cowbells image is being tarnished by suicide tourists. About 400 turned to clinics for help in committing suicide in 2007, 132 of them from abroad.

This is a legitimate fear. But what the Swiss government doesn't realize is that all the hip young suicides have for years steered clear of Dignitas because it's "where all the tourists go."

The NYP reports today that Ecko's finally lost control of his own brand. He was forced to sell off a controlling stake in Ecko, middle America's most familiar hip-pop fashion line in order to raise cash to pay off creditors. It'll help the feeble brand hobble on, but it won't be his.

This really makes his decision to build himself a 280,000 square foot office with an in-house basketball court and spend 750k on a souvenir baseball and live in a huge Italian villa-style Jersey mansion appear a bit financially imprudent. But none of that was as bad as his decision to take what was once an actual cool, credible hip hop clothing brand (I remember when it was "ECHO" with an "H," yo), and turn it into something that took up entire Kids' sections in middle American malls.

Now you know, Marc: That's impossible. And you lost all your money doing it. If Marc Ecko can teach us anything, it is "Don't be wack on purpose." Also, "Putting out more varieties of something wack just leaves you with a multitude of wack things."

We'll think of some more.

Grand Rapids resident Cynthia Luke, 51, was the first person to die of H1N1 in Kent County, Michigan last week. After her family released her cause of death to the media, a shit storm blew in on a cold front of fear so powerful that it quickly wiped out any illusions of dispelling our swine flu ignorance in 140 characters or less. Reported a ">local news station:

Luke's family says they have barely been allowed to mourn because of all the controversy and rumors surrounding her death.

Friends of the family have been calling, sending their regrets for fear attending [Luke's funeral] would be "dangerous."

The family spent the weekend talking to the media, trying to convince friends and relatives that it was safe to pay their respects at Luke's funeral, which was yesterday. The local news report even sought out a forensic pathologist to tell everyone in an appropriately science-y way that "I can't imagine a scenario where you would be able to contract the H1N1 virus from a body in a funeral setting." After which he must have sat staring blankly at his forensic pathology degree in the semi-dark as he felt a shade drop around all of his previous accomplishments.

As for family's own outreach efforts: "It didn't do much good," Luke's brother, Frank Balsitis, said when reached by phone today. Around 65 people showed up to the funeral, he said. (A church employee said "about 100," but she was probably trying to be nice?). Balsitis said they were expecting as many as 400 close friends and relatives.

"I had only four people from my whole dad's side of the family," he said. Everyone else was "afraid of the unknown," and steered clear because of rumors that the hospital had been so concerned about Luke's case that they kept a log of everyone who visited her.

This whole episode is a bit too similar to something you might read in an account of burial during a medieval plague. Which, conveniently, I have one right here:

"It was often the mother who shrouded her son and placed him in the coffin... for everybody else refused to touch the dead body. No prayer, trumpet or bell summoned friends and neighbors to the funeral, nor was Mass performed."

Which would probably not be terrifying—just an interesting the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same-type-observation—except for the fact that those people didn't have science or reason or really any way to deal with the world except being afraid all the time and starting holy wars in the Middle East. The more things change!

No, on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire—the daytime version!—DeLay will appear via "Skype" (they will not get him a town car to a proper studio, even!) as a mere lifeline, for some nobody contestant. The lifeline is called "Ask the Expert," so let's hope for Tom's sake that the contestants end up stuck on questions of pest extermination, and not, say, Texas election law.

Friends and associates are encouraging Fox News chief Roger Ailes to jump into the political arena for real by running for president in 2012, top sources tell POLITICO.

"Ailes knows how to frame an issue better than anybody, and that's what we need now," says one Ailes friend who is encouraging the Fox founder, chairman and CEO to seek the Republican nomination to run against President Barack Obama.

This is of course a winking meta-joke, though it's not labeled as such. Roger Ailes is a personally loathsome fat man who literally has dozens of dead bodies in various closets around his various homes as a consequence of his 40-year career of killing people with television. The notion that he's considering a presidential run, or that any of his friends would urge him to consider one, exists exclusively in the mind of Mike Allen, who has confused the late-night "campaigns" he conducts in his bedroom with the help of a Roger Ailes doll and a Jon Stewart doll with reality.

But here's the joke: The White House's decision to delegitimize Fox News isn't intended to delegitimize Fox News. It is intended to elevate them into a political force, to fill the vacuum in the GOP leadership. By spinning a "White House v. Fox News" narrative, they've managed to temporarily supersede the "White House v. GOP" narrative, thereby making Fox News the de facto political opposition. Which is what both sides want: Fox News for money and viewers, and the White House because they like the idea of having an opposition that is noxious, untruthful, combative, angry, emotionally unstable, and subject to an unyielding financial incentive to be ever moreso. In that meta-world of jujitsu message wars—if you were trapped, Tron-like, inside Allen's foul mind—an Ailes candidacy makes perfect sense.

So let's put it on Politico and WIN THE MOTHERFUCKING WORLD. Except Drudge hasn't linked to it yet, either because he thinks it's too clever by half or he's not done masturbating to it.

Starting in 1983, Mr. Magic hosted "Rap Attack" with Marley Marl on WBLS radio in NYC—which was the first all-hip hop radio show, anywhere. For a long time, he was the man when it came to breaking new rappers on the East Coast. He got name-dropped a lot, as you would imagine. "Every Saturday, Rap Attack, Mr. Magic, Marley Marl," said Biggie Smalls. "I gots to have it/ I miss Mr. Magic," said Nas. Miss Info [via Gametagradio.com] posted a letter from DJ Premier this morning remembering the man's accomplishments:

HE PAVED THE WAY FOR ALL RADIO STATIONS THAT EVER DID MIXSHOWS AND ALSO SPARKED THE CAREER OF BOOGIE DOWN PRODUCTIONS DUE TO THE DISS HE SHOWED WHEN THEY CAME TO SHOP THEIR DEMO TO HIM AND WAS TURNED AWAY WHICH THEN SPARKED "SOUTH BRONX" AND "THE BRIDGE IS OVER"…….

And a late pass from us: RIP to Roc Raida, another hip hop legend and a crazy skilled scratch DJ with the X-Men who died about a week and a half ago after a martial arts accident. Life's short.

The two-story house she had occupied since roughly 2003 was attached and not particularly grand. That may be because the estate Anne Scripps Douglas left behind for her three daughters - the youngest sister, a daughter with Mr. Douglas, is named Victoria - was not strikingly large. It was $1.3 million.

Also the fact that her stepdad murdered her mom 15 years ago and then leapt to his death from the very same bridge. Could be a mix of those things.
[Pic: AP]