Well, I was truly shocked by this on all levels.
Speaking as one who merely went to lunch at the White House, I simply can’t fathom how anyone could get in without being invited. When I went, the layers of security were intense.
Several weeks before the lunch, I had to fill out a questionnaire, giving my Social Security number and my date and place of birth. I even had to call my mother and find out the name of the hospital where I was born. (It was the since closed Columbia Hospital for Women in Washington, D.C., for those of you who like those sorts of details.)
At the check-in when I reached the White House, one of my fellow guests arrived with a surprise date. (The audacity!)
The staff was lovely to the uninvited guest and said, “We are so sorry we are not able to have you attend, but we have a sitting room where you may wait for your friend, and we’d be happy to bring you a plate.”
There were many more checkpoints between the door and the event. The final obstacle was the first lady’s chief of staff, Susan Sher, who waited at the top of the stairs with the guest list.
It was probably the tenth time I saw the list. Luckily, I was still on it, and she recognized me and greeted me warmly. It was only then that I relaxed. It was such an elaborate process, I was nervous that they weren’t going to let me in!
And yet somehow these horrid party crashers were able to waltz right into the first State Dinner of the administration. What kind of message are these reality-show hoodlums sending to our young people? “You feel like going to the White House? Dress up and head on over there!”
Where is the penalty for that kind of brazenness? What kind of culture do we live in where someone can say, “I want it, so I’m going to have it now—circumstances be damned”?
People like this want the cheaper version of fame: celebrity. They want to be famous, but not for having done anything. That’s the opposite of what I think our young people need to be taught, which is: It’s wonderful to aspire to things. Aspire to be invited to the White House. Maybe one day you will be. To accomplish such a feat, it’s very important to practice good qualities of character.
Shortly after the crasher scandal, I was interviewed by a blogger who sees these crashers as national heroes.
“It’s what we all should be doing,” she said.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha,” I responded.
“I’m not joking,” she replied. “I’m altogether serious.”
“This is egregious behavior,” I asserted. “It’s the White House and the president. It’s a State Dinner. One doesn’t crash the White House. One doesn’t crash a wedding. One doesn’t crash anything that’s invitation only.”
“It shouldn’t be exclusive,” she said.
“What?” I said with incredulity. “They’re private events!” I wondered if she thought Andrew Jackson’s 1829 inauguration, at which the public showed up at the White House ball and trashed the place, was a good model. “Are you just trying to get a rise out of me?” I asked.
She assured me that she was not.
“What do you say to your children?” I inquired, fearing the answer.
“I tell them: ‘You go wherever you want to go! You do whatever you want to do!’”
I said I thought that underscored a dangerous sense of entitlement. Young people need guidelines. What are they going to do? Just arrive at orientation at Harvard and say they want to go there and so they will, even though they haven’t been accepted and haven’t paid tuition?
“What’s your feeling about domestic violence?” I asked. “Is anyone entitled to act out in any way?” (I was being interviewed about Liz Claiborne Inc.’s support of domestic violence prevention programs before we’d veered off to talk about the crashers.)
“Having been on the receiving end of domestic violence, I don’t feel that way,” she said.
“Well,” I said, “you have experience that tells you otherwise. Maybe if you were the host of an invitation-only dinner party and people whom you weren’t expecting showed up and you had no place to seat them, you would realize that’s wrong.”
I still believe that to be true, even if people like those terrible White House party crashers are constantly providing a counterexample in which trashy behavior is rewarded. To cheer myself up, I try to remember the difference between short-term and long-term success. Living a really good life and making a real mark on society is a marathon, not a sprint.
NOW, BACK TO REGULAR old parties. I confess to you, and I’m somewhat ashamed of this: I don’t particularly like entertaining. I know I should, but I just don’t.
I love cooking. I cook for myself every day. I like the ceremony of it. It takes me into a different zone. I make a lot of pasta and meat loaf (ground chicken or turkey and only occasionally ground beef). Rather than buying in bulk, I just grocery shop every day. I know my rate of consumption, and that way I can just pick up some produce and whip something up. I haven’t bought red meat in a long time. I’d like to say it’s because I’m so ecologically conscious, but the truth is, I can’t make a good steak.
But cooking for a crowd of five or ten or, heaven forbid, twenty?
No, thank you. I don’t like feeling like a slave to the care and feeding of my guests. Whenever I’ve had parties, I’m in the kitchen mixing drinks for the entire evening, and I never actually get to enjoy and converse with anyone. Maybe that’s why the only people I see with any regularity are my friends the Banus, who drink only champagne. It makes hosting so easy. All I have to do is say, “Want some more?” and pour away.
Honestly—and maybe some of you can relate to this—I just can’t stand the pressure of being responsible for hosting a memorable (and not in a bad way) evening. Martha Stewart, bless her heart, intimidates me. That level of entertaining is so over my head: What do you mean, you didn’t dig up your own potatoes for this dish? You didn’t make the doilies? The plates didn’t just come out of a kiln?
I love Martha, but it gets ridiculous.
And yet, I have learned a few things in my many years of party attendance.
Bad weather is good for parties. You get only those people who really want to be there.
Entertaining shouldn’t be about showing off. It’s all about making people feel comfortable and setting a stage for everyone to have a good time, make new friends, and have stimulating conversations. You want to leave a party thinking: If I hadn’t gone to that, I never would have met this wonderful person, or had that delicious meal, or felt that sense of camaraderie with the people I met at the dessert table.You don’t want anyone looking at the clock, thinking, When can I leave?
NOW, WHERE ARE MY single ladies and men? It’s hard, isn’t it, when you don’t have someone to take to a party full of couples? At office parties and certain events, there is pressure to bring someone. People are constantly trying to hook me up with dates, but I’d just as soon go alone.
Even my own mother (to whom I’ve never officially come out) says, “What about your old age? Don’t you want to be with someone?”
Lately, I’ve started to say, sincerely, “Maybe not.”
The truth is, I don’t have time to be a good partner. Relationships take commitment, and all my energy goes into my work. I wouldn’t want to let someone I cared about into my life and then never be home, or always be distracted. To be a good partner, I would have to give something up. What would it be?
There are a lot of perfectly happy single people in this city. It just matters who you are and what you want. And I would never want to be one of those serial monogamists who have a different partner every year and are always wondering why it never works out. Generally speaking, there’s a reason why people can’t sustain a long-term relationship. They think, It can’t be my fault,when the odds are pretty good that they’re doing something at least subconsciously that tells the world they’re not ready to settle down. At least I knowI don’t want to settle down!