Cirque Du Salahi: Be Careful Who You Trust (22 page)

Michaele informed Matt that he had not paid them for the interview, which we’re sure was a load off his mind.

… Oh wait, Michaele is the leading candidate to become Supreme Diva on the Bravo network’s upcoming “Real Housewives of D.C.” And Bravo, like NBC, is owned by NBC Universal. Strangely, Matt forgot to disclose the connection.

Bravo Television network’s refusal to step up and publically admit that they had already cast Michaele Salahi in
The Real Housewives of D.C.
long before the state dinner tied the Salahis hands and left them unable to fully defend themselves. As an unintended consequence, it was also tainting the image of Matt Lauer, one of NBC Universal’s most visible and valuable talents. Bravo executives chose to stay mum in case Michaele and Tareq were ever actually indicted for something.

The Gift That Keeps
On Giving

When you’re a TV network and you’re going for the biggest bang for the PR buck, you employ your most potent attention-getting devices. So in mid-June 2010, when Bravo finally decided to anticlimactically announce their cast of The
Real Housewives of D.C.,
the network went to the source of all their past and most juicy publicity. Bravo leaked word to the TV Columnist Lisa De Moraes of the
Washington Post
, and to writers Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts at the “The Reliable Source” column.

De Moraes led her column with the show’s most newsworthy cast member, Michaele Salahi. Bravo showed no concern at all that her coverage might consist of yet another ugly swipe at Michaele. They were all too cognizant of the grim lesson society learned long ago; there really is no such thing as bad publicity when attention is your primary goal.

“Michaele brims with a phoniness that supersedes merely phony.” De Moraes wrote, “In butter tresses and designer dresses, she proves so phony she’s authentic. Michaele may be the most authentically phony person in the history of the
“
Real Housewives” franchise.”

Over at “The Reliable Source,” readers were reminded in a top paragraph that “Federal and Virginia prosecutors (are) still weighing charges against Tareq and Michaele Salahi for White House dinner crashing and certain business practices.” Apparently it did not matter to “The Reliable Source” that it had been seven months since the incident and there was no indication that either the feds or the Commonwealth of Virginia intended to pursue a case against the Salahis.

The sad credo among bad journalists has long been to “never let the facts get in the way of a good story.” But in the wake of the White House state dinner fiasco, the bar was lowered several more notches. The new, “new normal” seemed to be never let the facts get in the way of a chance to sneer and make snide comments.

The
Washington Post
did manage to fit in mentions of the other four
Housewives
cast members, Stacy Scott Turner, Mary Schmidt Amons, Catherine Ommanney and Lynda Erkiletian, buried deep within their coverage of the official Bravo announcement.

The
Washington Post
also helped Bravo promote its most popular franchise with a front page spread in the “Style” section that included a large, top-of-the-fold photo of Michaele. However, in a classic example of an attempt to have your cake and eat it too—the
Post
’s Ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, felt it necessary to address the growing grumpiness of readers complaining about having seen so many stories about the Salahis. Alexander admitted the newspaper had probably over covered the couple:

Since the Salahis’ White House exploits generated headlines seven months ago, they have been written about in more than 110 Post stories or columns. The coverage totals more than 2,200 column inches, the length of a novel. There have been scores of photos. All told, more than 30 reporters and researchers have contributed.

Alexander thought it remarkable that so many readers “find the couple detestable, especially the Salahis’ moth-to-flame craving for media attention,” as if public taste for vitriol was something he could not comprehend. Still, no mention was made of the
Washington Post
’s “moth-to-flame craving” for increased readership. In fact, Alexander warned readers to brace for even more such stories, because the
Post
had learned, as he wrote, “The Salahis don’t disappoint. Journalistically, they’re a gift that keeps giving.”

The next Sunday, July 1, 2010, Alexander revealed some startling statistics. He wrote that all those column inches devoted to Michaele and Tareq had greatly helped the
Washington Post’
s struggling bottom line. Amazingly, the Salahi content on the
Post
’s website had topped an unprecedented five million (yes, 5,000,000) views since Thanksgiving! Even more astonishing was the fact that 80 percent of the page views were from
outside
the Washington DC area. In short, the Salahis were so good for business there was no way the
Washington Post
was going to scale back the coverage.

Bravo Television also had a potential gold mine on its hands. Everyone seemed to be making money but the Salahis. The guaranteed news coverage that constantly followed Michaele and Tareq, coupled with the seething dislike the other
The Real Housewives of D.C
openly displayed for the couple, guaranteed ratings success for the season’s programs.

Bravo’s public relations plan was to showcase the entire cast at the annual Television Critic’s Association gathering in Beverly Hills, California, the week before the official premiere on August 5, 2010 of
The Real Housewives of D.C.
It would be the kickoff to an entire week of publicity appearances. But the network refused to pay for Tareq’s plane ticket to Los Angeles. Truth be told, they really didn’t want him there. Michaele was easily managed, while Tareq was not. Only the kindness of a private benefactor got Tareq a ticket to accompany his wife. He arrived feeling both annoyed at the network and smug that he’d gotten to L.A. when they clearly didn’t want him there.

For Michaele, the continuing drama between her husband and her employer added to her stress level, and yet she always seemed desperate to have Tareq accompany her places. Michaele consistently worried about becoming symptomatic during her travels and felt she needed a trusted person with her. If she had to read a document or deal with the small number pads on her cell phone during one of her vision blur-outs, or if she felt her balance becoming an issue, she knew it could force her to explain herself to an outsider. If the tingling in her limbs became too much and she had to sit down, she wanted someone to help divert attention away from her frailty. Nearly two decades after being diagnosed with MS, Michaele still struggled to keep the secret.

The Bravo TV publicity machine at the TV Critics Association gathering seemed to be running smoothly—until the last night of the event. The scene played out at the famous Trader Vic’s restaurant at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, at around midnight while all the cast mates were enjoying drinks in the lounge. Many of the TCA writers were sitting nearby, toasting the end to their annual get-together. Conversation at the
Housewives
table suddenly turned from lively to lousy. Tareq threw a glass of red wine at Lynda Erkiletian, the cast member who famously declared on the program (and in all the Bravo promos) that Michaele was “skin and bones” and needed an intervention for her “anorexia.”

The continuing falsehood infuriated Tareq, who knew the truth about Michaele’s “weight issues.” The details of exactly what Erkiletian said that caused Tareq to toss red wine on her couture dress are points of argument.
He says
Lynda was talking about Michaele’s supposed “anorexia” again.
She says
she was trying to quiet his loud talk and his verbal harassment of others in their party. Lynda threw a glass of something back at Tareq—Perrier water, or Scotch, depending on which version you believe. Naturally all the television writers within view wrote about it the next day, but as of this writing no video of the actual altercation has surfaced.

After that incident, the
Housewives
banded together and refused to travel or even be in the same room as Tareq Salahi. His inexcusable behavior frightened them, they said, and Bravo executives agreed to make adjustments to the rest of the schedule. The other cast members would not have to travel with the Salahis, or even stay in the same hotel.

The cast’s next promotional stop was New York City to appear on both NBC’s
Today Show
and on ABC’s
The View.
The two top rated programs appealed to the very audience demographic Bravo hoped to attract to the
Housewives
series.

On August 4
^th
, all five smiling
Housewives
were seen standing on the
Today Show’s
outdoor set at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. It was a first, for four of the five cast members. Michaele and Tareq had already been interviewed (twice) by Matt Lauer about the White House story, but never about the Bravo series. Television’s number one rated morning show was a great place to show off the ladies of the
Real Housewives of D.C
. Everyone seemed relaxed and happy. Cast member Mary Amons even waved to her children in the nearby crowd during the live segment.

Tareq Salahi, however, was not happy that morning. He had been stewing about what he increasingly came to see as a long list of Bravo transgressions, from prohibiting them from earning much-needed money through outside media appearances, to making promises he believed they did not keep. He felt Bravo’s actions unfairly locked in Tareq and Michaele, sabotaging them at every turn from staving off financial collapse. Bravo’s poverty-level payment to the Salahis for the TV show was never going to be enough to help them keep their home.

With every passing day, the size and scope of the burden that he and Michaele took on when they signed up to be on a “reality” TV series loomed larger in his life. But this was the trade off made by this couple and countless others like them for the great honor of being in a “reality” series on commercial television. Participants are all told the terms before they put pen to paper and sign the contract, but they sign anyway, knowing that the big money only comes to cast members if and when the show goes into multiple seasons. Until then, a large part of a cast members’ existence is under the network’s influence or outright control.

Tareq had been instructed by Bravo on the night before the
Today Show
appearance to stay away from Rockefeller Center because he was considered too disruptive to the
Housewives
cast. He came anyway, but kept a low profile. The Salahis say they were told no family members would be participating at the NBC event, so when Mary acknowledged her children in the crowd, Tareq saw it as just another instance of untruthfulness and hostility toward him. At the end of the
Today Show
segment, Tareq pressed forward to join his wife. Michaele was upset.

“She had really wanted me to be there for her. We told them good-bye right then, out there on the street. We said we weren’t going to go to
The View
,” Tareq says of the next stop on the PR bandwagon that morning. “Michaele and I said we were going back to the hotel and then going home.”

As they got into their waiting limousine, the Salahis tell of being surprised when two Bravo female executives pushed in behind them. The executives instructed the driver to head for the ABC studios of
The View
on the west side of Manhattan as the women pleaded with the Salahis to reconsider.