Never mind the emails, the list, or whether there was an actual invitation. Givhan claims that the Salahis got into the state dinner because "they didn't look like interlopers, which is to say, they didn't look like poor cousins who had scraped together their last dime to buy some fancy frocks from the local thrift shop."
And, even more important, she asks:

The Salahis weren't on the guest list. But instead of turning them away, the Secret Service waved them in. Would they have been so gullible if it had been a young black man in a tuxedo or a short, squat, gray-haired woman in a modest black dress standing out there in the mist insisting that they were on the guest list? Maybe. But probably not.

It's hard not to agree: From fairy tales to Barbie to Marilyn Monroe to glossy ladymags, the high-fashion runways and flicks like Legally Blonde, the iconic blonde is the one who gets all the attention, who people want to be around, who gets what she wants. As Givhan puts it:

She is the archetype for so many of the cultural touchstones of male-female interactions. The damsel in distress is not typically depicted as a dark-haired, middle-aged woman, after all. The Bergdorf blonde — that high-maintenance prima donna — still wins the wealthy prince. Why? Because even with her demanding, narcissistic ways, she's still the epitome of the trophy wife. He who has her wins.

The sad part is that even though we have a black man in the office of Commander-In-Chief, what it means to "look" like a VIP party-goer hasn't updated; we're still judging books by their covers. The Secret Service isn't suspicious of a tall, well-coiffed blonde. And think about it: This concept ties in to skin-lighteners in India (one of the leading brands is called White Beauty) and recent experiments (based on Dr. Kenneth Clark's tests in the 1950s) in which little girls declare white baby dolls "good" and black baby dolls "bad." If the election of Barack Obama is progress, doesn't Michaele Salahi's party-crashing suggest this nation still has quite a ways to go?

Why They Got In: They Looked Like They Belonged [WaPo]

Earlier: 'White Beauty' Has An Ugly Message
In India, Fair Is Handsome & Dark Is Doomed
September Glossies: Same Sh*t, Different Year
On The Runways Of Milan, Color Just Wasn't Considered Chic
Related: A Girl Like Me: A Short Film By Kiri Davis [Google Video]

The alternative, reports the New York Times, would be a system of "nonprofit cooperatives," set up to provide a choice for citizens who can not afford the costs of private health insurance. "I think there will be a competitor to private insurers," Sebelius says, "That's really the essential part, is you don't turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing. We need some choices, we need some competition." [NYTimes] [AP]

• Everyone's still wondering who is to blame for nobody knowing everyone at AIG was about to get big fat bonus retention payments this week. Today's culprit? The Fed, which Geithner once ran. [Washington Post]

• Current AIG CEO Ed Liddy thinks it's mean that Senator Chuck Grassley wants him to off himself. [Politico]
• Oh, hey, more retention payments during the biggest recession in decades and increasing unemployment! This time, they're going to Fannie Mae, which had to be taken over by the government too. [Washington Post]
• Republicans don't want to pass legislation to tax AIG's bonuses because they're Republicans, only they do because Americans like the idea, only they don't because they want to have more time to embarrass the Democrats. Stalling: your tax dollars at work. [Politico]
• The Governor of Illinois, however, has no problem increasing taxes to pay for things. Remember, Rod Blagojevich was taking bribes to stop these kinds of shenanigans! [NY Times]
• New York Governor David Paterson, however, isn't so keen to raise taxes on rich people, fearing they would all flee New York City. Where are they gonna go, Des Moines? Not bloody likely. [NY Times, NY Times]
• Defense Secretary Robert Gates will put an end to stop-loss by 2011, just in time for the 2012 Presidential campaign. [NY Times]
• Attorney General Eric Holder is going to stop raids on medical marijuana providers, so get your prescription ready. [NY Times]
• California Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher confirmed that she's giving up her House seat for a hot seat at State with Hillary. [Washington Independent]
• One of the assholes responsible for creating the clusterfuck that is the TSA really doesn't like being subjected to its clusterfuckery. [Washington Post]
• And Colin Powell's former chief of staff thinks Cheney is Satan incarnate, too. Actually, not Satan, just a puppet of Osama bin Laden. [ThinkProgress]

Despite the fact that tax and nanny issues reportedly stymied Caroline Kennedy's move to the Senate  which Governor David Paterson is now denying  tax-and-nanny-issues Tim Geithner was confirmed by the Senate after a minor delay and sworn in yesterday. He then gave a speech that I didn't hear because I was at a bar toasting the fact that a man with documented tax and nanny issues can be elevated to the role of Secretary of the Treasury but a woman with rumors of the same should hang her head in shame and withdraw from public life.

Earlier in the day, Barack Obama spent some time shaming the Bush Administration and its "environmental" policies, directing the EPA to try to figure out away to rescind the Bush era order that California isn't allowed to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from cars and get on regulating emissions on a federal level. Hillary Clinton followed that up by announcing that Todd Stern is going to be the State Department's envoy on climate change  meaning that one of the Clinton-era negotiators of the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions is going to be in charge of outreach and negotiations on climate change matters. That's probably a good sign  and a better one than the fact that, for the second time in a week, Obama has decided to wave his own rules on lobbyists joining his Administration and announced that a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist is headed to the Treasury Department. I think we've sort of had enough Goldman guys at Treasury for a while.

In other foreign policy-esque news, Obama's pick for CIA director, Leon Panetta, is in a holding pattern having reportedly forgotten to turn in a bunch of his financial disclosure paperwork for his confirmation hearing (early reports indicate the dog at it) but now that Geithner's been confirmed despite his, it'll all probably be ok. Our new UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, called Darfur an "ongoing genocide" and isn't planning on letting it out of her sights when the cameras are off, which is probably a welcome change after the forgetfulness of the last Administration if she follows through.

And in straight-up fucked up news, the Vatican recently un-excommunicated 4 priests who split with the Vatican over the Church's sixties-era statements that anti-Semitism is bad. One of those priests celebrated by getting on television while in Germany and denying the Holocaust. The Nazi Pope thinks that's very poorly done of him, and plans to do fuck-all about it. In the meantime, the gas chambers that the Nazis tried to destroy at Auschwitz to cover up their crimes are falling into severe disrepair  as is much of the Birkenau complex  because of lack of funding, which will allow the next generation of Holocaust deniers to point and say: "Look! Nothing to see here." You know, sort of like the government of the Sudan is hoping to do in Darfur. It seems that evil people, at least, learn the right history lesson.

• Hillary Clinton has not agreed to be Obama's Secretary of State even if she is officially offered it. [Politico]
• She has, however, been asked to head Ted Kennedy's health reform task force next year. [The Hill]
• Mr. Jowls will remain the Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security. Jane Hamsher and others say, in so many words, fuck that guy. [Politico, Firedoglake, Politico]
• Chuck Norris might be able to defeat ninjas, cowboys and anyone who talks back, but what he's really, really scared of is boys who like to kiss other boys (we assume that, like most raging homophobes, he furiously masturbates to girl-on-girl porn). Chuck Norris, I have watched gay bear porn and survived with nary a scratch. I double dog dare you. [Queerty]

• In the mean time, Eric Holder appears poised to become this country's first African-American attorney general. Some people have their panties all in a bunch that he might or might not have had something to do with the 11th hour pardon of Marc Rich in the Clinton Administration. [Newsweek]
• Beau Biden, on the other hand, will not accept an appointment to his father's Senate seat and will likely deploy to Iraq as planned. [Washington Post]
• Less gracious is outgoing Representative Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colorado) who has yet to officially concede the race she lost in a landslide to Democrat Betsy Markey or thank her staff, but what would you expect from the woman who staked her legislative career on trying to pass a Constitutional amendment to forever prohibit same sex marriage? [Politico]
• Speaking of controversial pardons, apparently Ted Stevens wants one. [Politico]
• Republicans are trying to decide whether to try and trample people's rights in order to regain some semblance of political relevance, or whether they'd like to try doing stuff for the Real Americans they so desperately swear they represent. [Huffington Post]
• Chuck Hagel pretty much said that Rush Limbaugh can go fuck himself during a speech. I say that all the time, Chuck! Want to grab a drink and make fun of him sometime? [CNN]
• Diane Sawyer conducted her interview with Ashley Alexandra Dupre, originally famous for fucking former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer for money, who, if this picture is any guide, will heretofore be known for sneaking into Sarah Palin's tanning beds one too many times and stealing Jane Fonda's steez from 9 to 5. It's unclear whether she actually says anything to make the interview worth watching, but since she's probably not going to dish about whether Spitzer really tried to fuck her up the ass without a condom while wearing his socks and singing show tunes, I'm guessing not. Fine, I never really heard rumors of show tunes. [Huffington Post]

MOE: Whoa 8:45 on the dot!
ON THE NOSE.
MEGAN: That's impressive!
MOE: I'm never on time!
MEGAN: Me neither!
MOE: So guess what? I thought I made this reservation to fly to Seattle tomorrow and it turns out the reservation is for today and tomorrow's flight is sold out, and tonight's flight is sold out!
MEGAN: Hey, I've never been to Seattle and I've always meant to go and I totally actually did that once, only I didn't find out until an hour after the flight actually left. I felt like the world's largest idiot.
MEGAN: Anyway, so the British judges ruled in favor of the Nazi sado-masochistic orgy guy in his lawsuit against the tabloids, because I know we were all on the edges of our seats about that.
And Rudy Giuliani's annoying male progeny is suing Duke for kicking him off the golf team because it will ruin his plans to become a professional golfer. You know, his shitty golfing won't, but Duke cutting him would. Apple, tree in terms of sheer annoyingness and hubris.
MOE: Um, does his mean young people actually might bother voting in this election?
That's a story about an attack ad the Let Freedom Ring foundation is running on MTV. Um, do conservatives ever do youth outreach? Also, in this campaign? What? Also, as attack ads go, it's pretty tame. And cost like $13 to produce.
MEGAN: God, I love the names of bullshit conservative groups! There's always some play on freedom, freedom to own guns and have your religious beliefs imposed on others and to not pay taxes, just not freedom of speech and right of assembly and to IM without the government reading it and to have an abortion.
MOE: Duke is one of those schools that could probably turn a lot of decent impressionable young conformists into abject douchebags but Andrew Giuliani probably had an advantage. He's suing the Duke golf team for booting him off in a "bizarre scheme"…
A bizarre scheme otherwise known as "What can I say, I got sick of the little bitch."

The suit contends the new coach, O.D. Vincent, wanted to reduce the size of the team and trumped up or exaggerated "minor" incidents as an excuse to cut Giuliani. Vincent, who had caused a stir at UCLA when his team there posed naked - holding ball baskets - in Golf Digest, accused Giuliani of driving out of a parking lot too fast, tossing a putter, busting a driver and throwing an apple at a teammate during an argument.

MEGAN: I think that throwing shit at people is generally grounds for getting kicked off of shit.
MOE: I predict success for young Andrew, because it is Duke and as everyone knows money pretty much buys you whatever there.
MEGAN: Well, there and everywhere else.
MOE: Yeah Duke is just apparently particularly bad, according to that story about rich dumb kids whose parents get courted on special fundraising tours starting when they are like 12.

Cissy Bunn acknowledges her daughter didn't fit the academic profile of a Duke student. "She's bright, she had good grades, but she doesn't meet the superstar status," Mrs. Bunn says. "Did my normal child take the place of somebody who could really make a difference in the world? Sure, yes, to an extent. But there are so many things you can lose sleep over. I'm happy for me and my child."

MEGAN: My alma mater has a special 2-year program for stupid little rich kids (and the occasional person with actual potential). It gets them a group of students that will pay full tuition and doesn't need financial aid, but lowers the average SAT scores of the university so much that they take those students out when reporting it to US News & World Report, so the magazine won't rank us anymore.
MOE: Anyway, I just remembered that story because it was kinda truly gross. Like, if elite boarding school and private tutors can't land you a 1300 on your SATs I am sorry but nothing will and you belong fucking elsewhere.
(I say that as a former private SAT tutor who managed to coax 1300s out of some reeeeeally rambunctious kids.)
MEGAN: SATs are a bullshit test anyway. Standardized tests are a tool of the Man, which is why I did so well on them. It's a matter of whether you know or have learned how to game the system. I think it's not that someone like that isn't smart, it's that she doesn't feel like she has to try because she'll get what she wants anywhere, so there's no need to learn how to game the system.
MOE: (I didn't realize at the time I should have been buying their Ritalin off them.)
MEGAN: It's sort of like how financial institutions figured that even if they fucked up hard core the government would still bail them out, so there was no need to practice self-regulation or risk-management, since there was little risk.
MOE: That's a fair point. I mean, I personally hated the "system gaming" stuff because it was like, "No the point of this test is to see whether you know implicitly how to game the system." So I just basically told the kids CONCENTRATE. And focused on critical reading and vocab. One kid asked me if I had been watching too much Dawson's Creek.
I wonder what Maude Bunn is doing these days! I bet she's on Facebook.
MEGAN: I never watched Dawson's Creek. I think the WB didn't come in so well on my TV at college. But James VanDerBeek or whatever went to my sister's college before he made it, if being on one show is considered "making it."
I mean, it's better than I've ever done, but then I'm kind of a shit actor even when I'm a decent liar.
MOE: I think that's a big deal if only because without Dawson's Creek we never would have had Television Without Pity.
One of the most important cultural institutions of our time.
And I say that as someone who doesn't even watch TV.
MEGAN: Which sucks now that Bravo bought and redesigned it.
MOE: Well, that would suck even more if I watched TV. So did you check that Erik Wemple item about how the Washington Post's 97-part Chandra Levy series is quite possibly doing better pageview-wise than their Pulitzer-winning Walter Reed series? Although there is no actual data they are releasing to support this so it is fundamentally speculation? Speculation based on no underlying grievances or suspicions whatsoever??
MEGAN: Oh, by the way, Michael Savage is "clarifying" his shitty stupid assholic remarks on autism being a fake disease. It turns out that the uptick in diagnoses is due to doctors and drug companies peddling their wares like they did with ADHD, even though there are no drugs to treat autism. I hate that fucking guy. Fuck him, someone, please find him and beat him about the head.
Also, OF COURSE it's doing better, it's seriously written like at a 3rd grade reading level and published in like easily-digestable chunks and containing little in the way of actual new information. Like, you keep waiting to learn something and then never do if you read anything about it
MOE: I mean, is one thing to joke that, like, fibromyalgia or bipolar disorder is fake, but autism? Did he miss that Babysitter's Club? Also, in all seriousness, what are they prescribing to the autistic kids? I mean, I don't know nothing, but if it's SSRIs that's sort of a racket. Beyond that, regarding the Post, you know how carefully I monitor the Most-Viewed list because it provides a hilarious counterpart to the New York Times Most Emailed List. And right now Chandra is #5. I really think most of the Dana Priest investigations did better than that. The real mystery is Public Enemy Robert Novak, whose column  syndicated column!  is always like #1 or #2 for at least a few hours.
MEGAN: Also, you heard, the guy Bob Novak hit was a homeless dude? And he really did roll onto the hood and fall off and Novak drove away? I'm like, for real-real? You hit a guy at rush hour and figure no one will notice? What did he think this was, New York?
MOE: (Oh and guys! I know bipolar is real!! As is fibromyalgia! But it is true that bipolar is way over-diagnosed so the pharmas can maximize the profits on their schizophrenia meds before they lose their patents, so that is all I am saying!)
MEGAN: Also, I don't think that most autism patients are on medication. My cousin isn't. It doesn't really work like that, not that Michael Savage fucking knows because he knows so little about it.
MOE: You know who makes me appreciate our beloved commenters more? Yglesias's!
MEGAN: Oh, totally, his commenters all hate him. Oh, wait. Did I mention that I've been here long enough  9 months since I first wrote for you guys  that I have commenters that hate me too?
MOE: Hahaha I thought they all loved you! They are always like "Megan is a captain of industry and Moe is the one who says outrageous shit that doesn't even make sense," which anyway, brings me to Savage, and his "autistic kids are just little brats who obviously need a good spanking" line of argument. And shit like this will resonate with folks who wonder what happened to the days when you used to grin and bear it and not belabor things  shit, not even talk about things  and everyone sort of fell in line, except that one kid in every family who just sorta became a "black sheep" or a hermetic spinster or an alcoholic or a suicide case…you know? And I basically think most of it comes back to the economy. Anyway
You got bumped off over there?
We should probs address the Berlin speech.
MEGAN: Yes, I got bumped off but I am back and, actually, that speaks to the issue in my family because my cousin who has Asperger's syndrome, his grandmother on the other side of the family was like, whatever, you're just coddling him, his father was the same way and everyone on our side of the family was like, ohhhhhhh.
Yes, Berlin. 200,000 screaming Germans. We should all be friends! Hooray.